THE  LOVE  LETTERS 
~F  THEKINO^ 


R 


_:  3R.  THE   LITE 

-  M  ANTI  C  ;- 


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CASE 
B 


The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 


The   Love -Letters 
of  the  King 

Or,  The   Life   Romantic 


BY 


RICHARD    LE    GALLIENNE 

M 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND   COMPANY 
1901 


Copyright,  1901, 
BY  RICHARD  LE  GALLIENNE 


All  rights  reserved 


UNIVERSITY    PRESS     •    JOHN    WILSON 
AND     SON     •      CAMBRIDGE,    U.S.A. 


PZ3 
U<5 

1-7 


TO 
JULIE   AND   HESPER  AND    EVA 


Contents 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    IN  A  TWO-WHEELED  HEAVEN i 

II.    IN   WHICH    PAGAN    WASTENEYS    CURSES  — 

AND  BLESSES  —  WOMEN 5 

III.  ONE  WAY  OF  SORROW 12 

IV.  CONCERNING  ESSENTIAL  EXISTENCE   ...  16 
V.    SOME  POOR  ALTERNATIVES 21 

VI.    A  MOON-BATH 32 

VII.    "AND  O,  YE  FOUNTAINS,  MEADOWS,  HILLS, 

AND  GROVES  " 34 

VIII.    EASTER 37 

IX.    OLD  WALLS  AND  YOUNG  DAYS      ....  45 

X.    THE  MEADOW  OF  REMEMBRANCE  ....  51 

XI.    ADELINE  WOOD 57 

XII.    "THE  LOVE-LETTERS  OF  THE  KING"  ...  66 

XIII.  "THE   LOVE-LETTERS  OF  THE   KING,"  con- 

tinued      77 

XIV.  MERIEL 82 

XV.    A  VIGIL 92 

XVI.    "  THE  SAD  HEART  OF  PAGAN  WASTENEYS  "  101 


viii  Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XVI I .    IN  WHICH  WASTENEYS  SEES  MERIEL  ONCE 

MORE 112 

XVIII.    MERIEL  EXPLAINS  HERSELF 121 

XIX.    THE  MAN  FROM  FAIRYLAND      ....  132 

XX.    AN  OLD  LOVE-DOCTOR 137 

XXI.    IN  WHICH   WASTENEYS  COUNTS  UP   HIS 

FORCES 145 

XXII.    MYRTLE  ROME 149 

XXIII.  UNEXPECTED   HAPPINESS  FOR  ADELINE 

WOOD 154 

XXIV.  "THE  ROMANTICS"  AT  WASTENEYS  .     .  160 
XXV.    THE  GREAT  DUEL 185 

XXVI.    RELIGION  TO  THE  RESCUE 194 

XXVII.    SISTER  CATHERINE  UPON  ROSE-GARDENS  216 

XXVIII.    VICTORY  IN  SIGHT 230 

XXIX.    THE  WATERS  OF  FORGETFULNESS     .     .  234 

XXX.    ADELINE  AS  DEPUTY-MOTHER  ....  243 

XXXI.    IN  WHICH  MERIEL  CALLS  ONCE  MORE    .  254 

XXXII.    THE  LAST  JOURNEY 259 

XXXIII.  PHILOSOPHERS  OF  THE  BUTTERFLY    .    .  262 

XXXIV.  "AURORE  DE  PROVENCE" 266 


The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 


The 

Love-Letters  of  the  King 

CHAPTER  I 

IN  A  TWO-WHEELED   HEAVEN 

LATE  one  spring  afternoon,  quite  recently, 
a  hansom,  almost  intolerably  radiant  with 
happiness  —  so    it  seemed   to    other   han- 
soms going  east — was  driving  through  St.  James's 
Park  in  the  direction  of  Buckingham  Palace.     It 
contained  two  people,  a  man  and  a  woman,  not  too 
young  and  not  too  old,  and  it  was  from  them  that 
the  effulgence  proceeded. 

"Let  us  make  life  wonderful  for  each  other,"  the 
man  was  saying. 

"  You  have  already  made  it  wonderful  for  me," 
the  woman  answered. 

Thus  they  completed  the  second  hour  of  their 
acquaintance. 

They  were  in  all  the  exaltation  of  first  love 
experienced  for  the  twentieth  time.  Sudden  love 
had  come  upon  them  while  they  were  drinking  tea 
at  Mrs.  Lanyon's  that  very  afternoon.  In  an  in- 


: '(  ;2-'  :    tTfce*  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

stant  they  had  known  each  other,  swooped  down 
into  each  other's  eyes.  Their  first  words  had  been 
almost  a  declaration. 

"  How  strange  it  is  !  "  Pagan  Wasteneys  had 
said,  in  his  most  mystic  and  sincere  manner. 

"What  is  strange?"  asked  Daffodil  Mendoza, 
with  warm  eyes  that  knew  quite  well. 

"  Strange  that  we  should  meet." 

"  Would  n't  it  have  been  stranger  if  we  had  not 
met?"  asked  Daffodil,  pretending  to  be  shy  at  her 
impulsiveness. 

"  You  feel  that  too !  .  .  .  But  it  is  strange  all 
the  same,  for  I  so  narrowly  missed  coming  here 
to-day  at  all.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  was  feeling 
rather  bored,  and  inclined  just  to  laze  away  the 
afternoon  in  my  chair;  but  something  kept  on 
saying  '  go.'  Have  you  instincts  like  that?  Mys- 
terious senses  that  hint  impending  joy  or  sorrow? 
I  'm  sure  you  have.  Well,  something  kept  say- 
ing that  I  would  meet  You.  ...  I  have  n't  even 
caught  your  name,  but  I  know  it  is  You !  " 

"  Yes,  it  is  I,"  said  Daffodil,  half  laughing  and 
half  impassioned.  "  I,  Daffodil  Mendoza." 

"  Mrs.  Daffodil  Mendoza?  " 

"  Yes  "  —  with  a  pretty  sigh. 

"  I  always  think  '  Mrs.'  such  a  charming  addi- 
tion to  the  prettiest  name/' 


In  a  Two- Wheeled  Heaven  3 

"  Yes !  it  is  strange,"  said  Wasteneys  again, 
meditatively,  half  to  himself,  as  the  dullest  of  all 
palaces  came  in  sight,  "  very  strange." 

"  Tell  me,"  asked  Daffodil,  with  tenderest  sym- 
pathy. She  knew  that  Wasteneys'  face  was  plainly 
hinting  at  despairs  and  perhaps  depths  from  which 
she  had  come  at  the  decreed  moment  to  save 
him. 

"  So  strange,"  Wasteneys  continued,  "  that  we 
should  meet  now  —  now,  when  I  need  you  so." 

"  Do  you  think  I  can  help  you?  "  Daffodil  asked 
—  O,  so  womanly. 

For  answer  Wasteneys  looked  at  her,  and  rev- 
erently laid  his  hand  on  hers,  his  face  plainly  show- 
ing that  he  could  not  speak  of  it  now,  but  that 
indeed  she  and  she  alone  could  save  him  from  the 
abyss  of  that  mysterious  sorrow. 

"  Don't  speak  of  it,  if  it  hurts  you,"  said  Daf- 
fodil, adding  a  "  dear "  as  shy  and  fragrant  as  a 
blush-rose. 

"  Some  day,"  said  Wasteneys. 

"  Is  there  to  be  a  '  some  day  '  for  us  ?  " 

"  Can  you  doubt  it?     Don't  you  know  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  know." 

"  May  I  call  you  '  Daffodil '  ?  " 

"  Yes  —  Pagan." 

"You  darling!" 


4         The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"  When  shall  we  meet  again  ?  " 

"To-morrow?  It  must  be  to-morrow.  Will 
you  come  for  tea — about  three?" 

"May  I?" 

"  Yes  —  and  now  I  'm  afraid  you  must  go.  We 
had  better  not  drive  up  to  the  door  together.  We 
are  very  near  now.  O,  it  is  so  hard  to  leave  you. 
Think  of  me  to-night." 

"  God  keep  you,  Daffodil ;  you  don't  know  what 
this  means  to  me." 

"  And  to  me." 

Now,  of  course,  each  knew  that  it  meant  abso- 
lutely nothing. 


CHAPTER  II 

IN   WHICH   PAGAN   WASTENEYS   CURSES  —  AND 
BLESSES  —  WOMEN 

THE  hansom  had  hardly  moved  on  again 
before     Pagan     Wasteneys     had    already 
drafted  in  his  head  the  telegram  of  dis- 
appointment  which    he   would    send    at   the   last 
moment  on  the   morrow. 

"  O,  what  folly  it  all  is !  "  he  said,  half  aloud. 
"  It  must  end.  I  am  sick,  sick  of  it  all. 

"  *  What  of  soul  was  left,  I  wonder  — 
When  the  kissing  had  to  stop  ? '  " 

In  fact,  Pagan  Wasteneys  was  exceedingly  sad 
about  himself.  And,  without  wishing  to  be  hard 
upon  him,  it  was  quite  time  he  should  realize 
that  he  was  wasting  a  rare  nature  and  exceptional 
gifts  in  an  idle  pursuit  of  women,  which  had  not 
even  the  excuse  of  an  imperative  sensuality.  Yes  ! 
a  crowd  of  little  women,  without  a  thought  of 
harm,  were  eating  up  his  soul  as  they  would  nibble 
chocolate.  It  must  have  been  his  own  fault,  you 
say  !  Of  course.  Everything  is  our  own  fault  — 


6         The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

if  you  are  able  to  think  so.  Sadder  observers 
of  human  life  have  been  driven  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  a  man's  mistakes  are  not  so  much  his 
own  as  he  would  fain  believe;  that,  indeed,  he 
makes  them,  not  so  much  to  please  himself,  as 
to  gratify  the  vanity  of  some  natural  law,  which 
for  the  moment  whirls  him  about,  as  a  master- 
ful stream  has  its  way  with  a  straw.  Woman  is  a 
natural  law.  She  has  her  way  with  us ;  an  absurd, 
irrational  force,  which  we  laugh  at,  while  it  sweeps 
us  away. 

Wasteneys  had  taken  to  women  as  some  men  take 
to  dominoes.  His  life  had  failed  —  or  seemed  to 
fail.  It  had  ended  at  twenty-eight ;  ended,  that  is, 
for  all  the  uses  to  which  he  cared  to  put  it.  But, 
in  spite  of  this  essential  conclusion  of  his  life, 
Wasteneys  found  himself  in  the  possession  of  a 
superfluous  stock  of  vitality,  which  must  be  spent 
somehow.  Occasionally,  he  used  it  still  to  make 
an  unavoidable  poem  of.  Being  moderately  rich, 
he  was  debarred  from  the  wasting  exertions  of  that 
struggle  for  existence  which  mercifully  shortens 
life.  Parliament  was  too  foolish.  Literature  was 
too  ambitious  —  besides,  he  had  succeeded  in  lit- 
erature. Suicide  was  too  serious.  Only  women 
were  left.  And  he  let  the  women  take  him.  For 
a  man  in  despair  woman  is  the  line  of  least  resist- 
ance. What  did  it  matter,  after  all ! 


Wasteneys  Curses  and  Blesses         7 

And,  of  course,  it  was  the  One  Woman  that  was 
responsible  for  all  this. 

Yet  a  man  is  a  man,  and  to  every  man  God  has 
given  something  to  do  —  unless  he  does  which  he 
goes  to  his  grave  an  active  disappointment,  likely 
to  appear  later  as  a  turbulent  ghost.  Some  spirit, 
leaning  out  of  the  air,  had  whispered  to  Pagan 
Wasteneys  even  in  his  cradle  that  he  was  born 
with  Something  to  Do,  and  he  had  never  been  able 
quite  to  forget  that  divine  whisper.  He  knew  that 
he  was  a  Noun,  and  that  these  little  women  were 
but  parasitical  Adjectives.  Therefore  it  was  that, 
at  twilight  that  spring  evening,  Pagan  Wasteneys 
solemnly  cursed  women,  as  he  walked  back  to  his 
lodging  through  St.  James's  Park. 

Yet  even  as  he  cursed  them,  he  could  not  help 
blessing  them  too  —  for  the  sake  of  the  One 
Woman;  and  there  came  to  his  lips  a  certain 
prayer  of  Thanksgiving  for  Kind  and  Beautiful 
Women  which  he  had  written  long  ago. 

To  the  Power  that  made  me,  and,  all  undeserving,  set  me  in 

this  wonderful  world, 

I  give  thanks  for  kind  and  beautiful  Women. 
For  their  sweet  faces,  I  give  thanks. 
For  their  soft  voices,  I  give  thanks. 
For  their  thick  bright  hair   and   their  little   ears,    I   give 

thanks. 
For  their  deep  eyes  and  their  kind  lips  and  for  their  little 

feet. 


8         The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

And  for  their  musical  walking,  and  every  other  grace  and 
mystery  and  goodness  that  is  theirs ;  I  give  thanks  to  the 
Power  that  made  me  —  and  gave  me  eyes  to  see  them,  and 
ears  to  hear  them,  and  hands  to  touch  them. 

For  Kind  and  Beautiful  Women,  O  Gracious  Unseen  Power, 
receive  the  Thanks  of  a  Man. 

In  his  heart  Wasteneys  thought  far  more  seri- 
ously of  women  than  one  might  gather  from  this 
prayer,  with  its  almost  Oriental  attitude  to  woman, 
as  half  child  and  half  toy.  He  was  too  modern  to 
think  otherwise ;  and,  if  indeed  he  considered  that 
woman's  beauty  was  more  important  than  her  mind, 
it  was  because,  in  whatever  relation,  he  always  con- 
sidered beauty  more  important  than  mind.  Beauty 
was  to  him  the  most  serious  meaning  of  life,  or 
rather  hint  of  life's  meaning. 

Woman  also  brought  him  that  sense  of  strange- 
ness and  original  wildness,  that  zest  of  mystery  and 
unfathomable  delight  in  being,  for  which  he  chiefly 
valued  all  natural  things.  She  was  the  wild  bird 
in  civilization.  She  never  forgot  the  woods,  how- 
ever tame  and  content  she  might  seem  in  the  social 
aviary.  Leave  the  door  of  her  cage  open  a  mo- 
ment—  and  she  was  off  somewhere  singing  "  Free  ! 
free  !  free  !  "  among  the  green  leaves. 

Then,  too,  how  good  she  was,  how  brave,  how 
true  !  What  a  mother  heart  there  was  somewhere 
even  in  the  most  trivial  woman  he  had  known. 
What  warm,  heroic  impulses  she  had,  what  a 


Wasteneys  Curses  and  Blesses         9 

gift  for  sacrifice.  Beneath  a  surface  cynicism,  he 
never  forgot  how  good  the  most  unimportant  little 
woman  who  had  wasted  his  days  had  been  to  him. 
He  remembered  kind  looks,  which  alone  were  acts 
of  divine  charity.  Yes !  Woman  took  much  — 
yet  she  gave  back  much  again.  All,  at  least,  she 
had  to  give.  If  she  were  a  vampire,  she  was 
a  vampire  quite  unconscious  and  well-meaning. 
Even  that  big  sensual  Daffodil  meant  no  harm. 
How  could  she  be  expected  to  know  that  she  was 
one  more  danger  to  a  sad  and  striving  soul  —  she 
a  danger  who  had  meant  only  to  be  a  delight  — 
particularly  when  that  sad  and  striving  soul  chose 
to  disguise  itself  in  the  flippancies  of  a  whimsical 
amorist? 

But  cursing  is  seldom  logical.  On  the  contrary 
it  is  essentially  illogical.  It  is  really  meant  to  be 
a  general  recognition  in  terms  of  strong  emotion 
that  something  has  gone  wrong  with  our  lives; 
but  it  is  apt  to  take  advantage  of  some  particular 
accident,  in  itself  probably  innocent,  whereby  the 
more  forcibly  to  express  itself.  The  fault  need 
not  indeed  be  our  own  —  though,  indeed,  if  clearly 
so,  damning  oneself  is  as  uninteresting  as  solo  whist. 
The  Universe  is  the  real  culprit  —  but  what  is  the 
use  of  damning  the  Universe  ? 

Wasteneys  had  no  sincere  quarrel  with  women, 
not  even  with  the  One  Woman,  but  his  recognition 


i  o       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

of  that  fact,  and  of  all  their  beauty  and  mysterious 
greatness,  did  not  prevent  his  once  more  cursing 
them,  as  he  remembered  all  he  was  ordained  to  be 
and  all  he  was  not  —  because  of  One  Woman,  or 
rather  because  he  had  lost  One  Woman,  and  be- 
cause of  all  the  women  who  were  the  innocent 
obstacles  in  the  upward  pathway  of  his  life.  And 
his  cursing  was  somewhat  in  this  fashion  —  no 
more  entirely  serious,  it  will  be  observed,  than 
his  blessing : 

Cursed  be  Woman ! 

Cursed  be  all  Women  —  except  One  Woman,  whom  God 

bless. 

Cursed  be  the  Woman  who  forgets  all  for  your  sake. 
Cursed  be  the  Woman  who  writes  to  you  every  day. 
Cursed  be  the  Woman  who  would  gladly  die  for  you. 
Cursed  be  the  Woman  who  has  a  Mission  to  Help  you. 
Cursed  be  Women  with  Blue  eyes,  likewise  Women  with 

Gray,  Brown,  Green,  Hazel  and  Violet  eyes. 
Cursed  be  Little  Women,  and  cursed  also  be  Women  that 

are  tall. 
Cursed  be  Women  with  Golden  Hair,  and  also  Women  with 

Black. 
Cursed  too  the  Brown-haired  Women  .  .  . 

Wasteneys  could  curse  no  further  without  laugh- 
ing. It  was  his  gravest  weakness  that  he  could  not 
long  be  serious  without  laughing.  He  used  to  say 
that  it  was  his  humor  alone  that  prevented  his 
being  a  great  man;  and,  if  you  think  of  it,  no 
really  great  world-making  man  has  had  a  sense 


Wasteneys  Curses  and  Blesses       1 1 

of  humor — except   Shakespeare,  who,  after   all, 
was  only  a  writer. 

Pagan  Wasteneys  was  seriously  unhappy  about 
himself,  black  sorrowful:  so  it  was  that  as  he 
mounted  his  staircase  he  was  humming  this  sad 
little  new-made  song: 

"  O  Pagan  Wasteneys  !     Pagan  Wasteneys  O  ! 
Why  will  you  waste  your  one  existence  so  ! 
Waste  it  on  married  women  —  and  unmarried  ; 
Waste  it  on  every  woman  that  you  know  !  " 


CHAPTER   III 

ONE  WAY  OF   SORROW 

THE  greatest  of  all  poets  has  written  :  "  He 
jests  at  scars  that  never  felt  a  wound." 
Now  I  venture  to  think  that  there  he  is 
precisely  wrong.  It  is  your  mortally  wounded 
man  who  jests  at  scars.  Pagan  Wasteneys  was 
mortally  wounded.  He  knew  that,  however  he 
might  carry  himself  externally,  his  soul  was  finally 
stricken.  Had  it  been  otherwise,  it  had  been 
easier  to  be  ambitious,  easier  to  cut  a  serious 
figure  in  the  world,  easier  to  do  that  Something, 
whatever  it  might  be,  for  which  beneath  all  he  felt 
himself  created.  The  nature  and  manner  of  his 
mortal  wound  will  transpire  later. 

Sorrow  is  popularly  supposed  to  have  an  en- 
nobling and  refining  influence  —  like  Poverty.  On 
some  few  natures  it  doubtless  operates  in  that  way. 
Oftener,  I  fear,  its  influence  is  quite  otherwise.  For 
what,  after  all,  does  a  really  great  sorrow  mean  — 
but  the  withdrawal  of  our  raison  d'etre  ?  A  few 
unnatural  people  may  thrive  on  the  loss  of  all  that 
makes  life  real  to  them,  but  for  the  majority  —  cut 
the  tap-roots  of  joy,  and  the  human  tree  falls  into 


One  Way  of  Sorrow  1 3 

decay.  Moralist  spectators  may  say  that  there  is 
still  left  you  an  extravagant  supply  of  reasons  for 
going  on  living.  If  only  they  had  your  gifts,  your 
opportunities,  your  wealth !  How  gladly  they 
might  take  them  all.  Ah !  the  beautiful  apparatus 

—  so  useless  now  ! 

Besides,  who  are  you  that  shall  dictate  to  the 
mysterious  soul  of  another?  The  soul  of  man 
takes  strange  fancies.  It  is  apt  to  lay  up  its 
treasure  in  little  precarious  heavens,  the  heavenli- 
ness  of  which  others  cannot  understand.  A  little 
child,  perhaps,  shall  be  its  heaven.  The  child  dies 

—  or  lives  on  to  break  your  heart.     It  is  true  that 
Parliament  is  still  open  to  you.     Many  sounding 
things  remain  to  be  done.      The  gates  of   other 
people's  heavens  are  hospitably  thrown  open.    But 
where  is  your  little  child? 

There  still  remains  much  beauty,  much  music, 
in  the  world  —  but  it  all  belongs  to  other  people. 
Your  beauty  has  withered,  your  music  has  ceased. 
The  heaven  has  enough  stars  for  us  all  —  but 
what  if  the  tiny  star  on  which  we  had  set  our 
hearts  has  shot  down  the  gulf  of  space  some 
November  night,  and  shines  for  us  no  more,  is 
perhaps  lying  somewhere,  a  cinder,  on  the  iron 
floor  of  the  universe? 

No !  Heaven  is  a  personal  matter.  The  soul 
can  submit  to  no  dictation  concerning  its  heaven. 


1 4       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

The  heart  knows  its  own  bitterness,  because  it 
knows  so  well  its  own  joy. 

Well,  Wasteneys  had  lost  his  joy.  His  little  star 
had  shot  beyond  his  vision  even  at  his  first  mo- 
ment of  beholding  it.  Do  you  wonder  that  he 
should  be  indifferent  to  Parliament,  or  that  books 
seemed  hardly  worth  writing  now?  The  springs 
of  action  had  dried  up  with  the  springs  of  joy.  By 
every  law  of  sorrow,  made  by  those  who  have 
never  known  it,  he  should  have  come  out  of  all 
this  a  greater  man.  It  should,  in  fact,  have  been 
the  making  of  him.  Perhaps,  unknown  to  himself, 
it  was  doing  this  for  him  all  the  time,  one  of  those 
expensive  processes  of  development  which  we  do 
not  realize  till  they  have  done  their  work. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Wasteneys  had 
fanatically  nursed  his  sorrows,  or  willingly  set  up 
the  image  of  one  woman  thus  to  preside  over  his 
life.  On  the  contrary,  he  had  mocked  and  flouted 
this  possession  of  his,  and  been  unfaithful  to  it  in 
every  possible  way.  Nor  even  had  he  disdained 
the  vulgar  anodynes  —  though,  indeed,  he  laughed 
as  he  tried  them,  to  think  it  might  be  supposed 
possible  for  any  such  cheap  drugs  to  narcotize  a 
soul  like  his. 

Besides,  he  had  seriously  sought  some  other 
face  of  woman  that  might  with  its  lustre  dim  the 
face  that  burned  day  and  night  in  his  heart.  That 


One  Way  of  Sorrow  1 5 

was  perhaps  the  reason  of  his  turning  eagerly  to 
women,  when  the  one  woman  he  had  loved  had 
been  lost  to  him.  As  a  great  living  poet  expresses 
it :  "  He  had  sought  the  asp  for  serpents'  bites !  " 

"  But  woman  is  not  I  opine 
Her  sex's  antidote." 

The  old  wound  was  as  fresh  as  ever,  and  he  was 
sick  to  death  of  the  paltry  cures.  Laughter  was 
the  only  real  help  he  had.  So  he  laughed  softly 
at  himself  night  and  day,  and  took  what  pleasure 
he  could  in  trifles,  posing  now  this  way  and  now 
that,  incidentally  making  several  good  little  women 
happy  —  for  he  hurt  none  of  them  —  with  the  sur- 
plusage of  his  soul. 

Thus  he  gained  a  great  reputation  for  "  Ro- 
mance !  "  It  was  whispered  that  he  lived  "  The 
Life  Romantic !  "  What  strange  mistakes  are 
made  by  the  intelligent  spectator! 


CHAPTER   IV 
CONCERNING  ESSENTIAL  EXISTENCE 

NOW  I  can  well  understand  that  this  talk 
about  women  and  strangeness  and  what 
not,   this  hinted   spectacle  of   an   able- 
bodied  man  ruined  because  life  refused  him  the 
particular  moonbeam  on  which,  like  a  big  baby, 
he  had  set  his  heart:  that  all  this  is  very  tire- 
some and  exasperating  for  certain  readers  —  for 
whom  it  is  not  intended.     Why  on  earth  could  n't 
Wasteneys  go  and  hack  somebody  with  a  sword  — 
like  a  man? 

Well,  Wasteneys  could  have  done  that  too  had 
he  been  so  minded;  for  he  was  a  well-made 
athletic  fellow,  a  passionate  rider,  a  great  out- 
of-doors  man,  for  all  his  moonbeams  —  but  then 
he  did  n't  care  about  it.  It  did  n't  amuse  him. 
Killing,  however  brilliant,  stirred  his  sense  of 
pity,  not  his  lust  for  blood ;  though  indeed  there 
was  that  in  him  which  vibrated  with  joy  at  the 
assassination  of  a  tyrant,  or  the  noble  murder  of 
a  mean  enemy. 

Broadly  speaking,  there  are  in  England  only 
two  recognized  occupations  for  a  gentleman.  He 


Concerning  Essential  Existence       17 

can  either  kill  his  fellow  men,  or  govern  them. 
To  Wasteneys  one  occupation  was  as  uninterest- 
ing as  the  other. 

In  short,  his  circumstances  allowed  to  him  the 
perilous  privilege  of  what  I  may  call  essential 
living.  It  is  a  privilege  which  any  one  not  abso- 
lutely compelled  to  work  for  a  livelihood  may 
enjoy.  It  is  the  most  terrible  burden  of  the  rich, 
and  it  is  the  danger  of  most  women.  The  life- 
time of  the  multitude  is  providentially  occupied 
in  non-essential  living,  in  various  mechanical 
businesses  done  merely  from  the  widely  diffused 
desire  to  keep  going  man's  physical  existence. 

I  believe  that  most  men,  not  merely  poets, 
work  on  in  the  hope  that  some  day  they  will  have 
so  securely  provided  for  the  body,  that  they  will 
have  time  before  the  end  to  work  for  the  soul. 
To  them  too  the  body  is  but  a  pedestal  at  which 
all  this  time  they  have  been  working,  so  that 
some  day  they  may  proudly  set  upon  it  the 
winged  marble  of  the  soul.  Perhaps  they  are 
the  happier  in  that  they  seldom  complete  even 
the  pedestal,  and  indeed,  after  a  time,  forget  that 
there  is  anything  beyond  pedestal.  Better  far 
be  strenuously  absorbed  in  clothing  and  feeding 
the  body  than  have  too  much  leisure  for  the  soul ; 
unless  indeed  your  soul  be  very  active,  or  very 
happy.  The  material  necessities  of  life  shield 


1 8       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

us  from  the  fierce  cold  of  the  outer  abyss  of 
thought,  as  they  save  us  too  from  the  siren  call 
of  the  senses.  Blessed  are  the  bricklayer,  and 
the  clerk,  and  the  shopman,  and  all  other  slaves ; 
for  when  the  hard  day  is  done  they  are  too  weary 
for  thought,  too  weary  for  sorrow,  too  weary  for 
disastrous  dreams. 

When  a  man  is  not  compelled  to  earn  his  own 
food  and  clothing,  and  takes  no  interest  either  in 
killing  or  governing  his  fellows,  he  is  in  great 
danger.  That  is  why  most  rich  men  are  either 
so  sad,  so  dull,  or  so  brutalized.  They  have 
nothing  to  do.  They  were  born  to  work  eight 
hours  a  day  at  the  pedestal,  and  they  are  unac- 
customed to  the  business  of  the  soul.  Their  only 
hope  is  some  trivial  hobby.  Such  may  save 
them.  Else,  being  denied  the  energizing  activ- 
ity of  clothing  and  feeding  their  bodies,  they 
may  devote  themselves  to  the  one  physical  occu- 
pation left :  that  of  sensualizing  them. 

Wasteneys,  of  course,  was  not  so  poor  in  spirit- 
ual resources.  But  for  a  divine  accident,  he  had 
been  more  than  content  to  find  the  meaning  of 
life  in  one  of  those  arts  of  beauty  for  which  a 
lifetime  is  proverbially  short.  As  a  boy  his 
dream  was  to  be  a  poet,  and  by  the  side  of  this 
dream  —  though  he  had  his  youthful  loves  and 
friendships,  very  ardent  —  all  human  interests 


Concerning  Essential  Existence      19 

were  but  phantom  voices  to  which  now  and  again 
he  would  pay  courteous  heed.  In  his  heart,  how- 
ever, he  knew  that  he  cared  for  nothing  but  to 
make  beautiful  things.  And  this  desire,  being 
accompanied  by  faculty,  had  not  gone  without  its 
fruition.  Pagan  Wasteneys  had  made  beautiful 
things.  This  dream  and  its  fulfilment  had  satis- 
fied him  right  through  his  young  manhood.  It 
was  more  than  enough,  he  thought,  for  many 
lives.  At  least  it  overflowed  his  present  life  with 
rainbows. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  he  had  not  created 
beauty  without  the  willing  aid  of  love.  Women 
had  inspired  him  as  they  have  inspired  all  the 
men  who  have  made  or  done  anything.  Not  ac- 
cidentally, we  may  be  sure,  did  the  Greeks,  with 
their  unerring  instinct  for  universal  symbolism, 
make  the  Muses  women.  But  as  yet  women  had 
stopped  at  inspiring  him.  That  the  beauty  of  a 
woman  might  not  merely  inspire  but  eclipse  the 
beauty  of  art,  was  a  thought  that  had  never  pre- 
sented itself  to  his  mind  in  the  vaguest  form. 
Even  when  that  miracle  had  happened  it  took  him 
long  to  realize.  But  it  did  happen  one  strange 
morning  in  his  twenty-ninth  year,  and  from  that 
moment  his  occupation  was  gone.  All  the  beauty 
of  the  world  had  suddenly  concentrated  and  with- 
drawn in  one  face.  No  art  could  any  longer  fill 


20       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

the   large  leisure  of   his   soul.      So  Pagan  Was- 
teneys  found  himself   with  the  burden   of   a  life 
which  he  was  compelled  to  live  "  essentially  " 
but  from  which  the  motive  essential  had  been 
taken  away. 

Many  men  in  his  position  would  have  worked 
all  the  harder,  and  indeed  he  did  work  harder 
for  a  while.  Not  being  a  soldier,  he  could  not 
recklessly  hurl  the  charmed  life  of  sorrow  into 
some  hell  of  fight;  nor  did  the  House  of  Com- 
mons seem  to  offer  a  sufficiently  august  employ- 
ment for  the  disbanded  energies  of  his  spirit. 
But  he  threw  himself  wildly  into  the  old  life 
of  words  — till  one  day  he  suddenly  realized  that 
words  were  as  dreary  to  him  as  all  else.  All  the 
words  in  the  world  seemed  to  have  died.  Only 
a  woman's  name  survived. 


CHAPTER   V 

SOME   POOR  ALTERNATIVES 

OF  course,  there  were  a  few  other  things 
Wasteneys  might  have  done  besides  kill- 
ing or  governing  his  fellows.     He  might 
have  taken  to  climbing  terrible  mountain-peaks, 
become  one  of   those  idealists  of   height,  whose 
formula   of    romance   is   the   phrase :    "  so   many 
thousand   feet   above   the  sea."     But  then  Was- 
teneys loved  the  sea. 

He  might  have  travelled  "in  strange  lands," 
and  he  would  undoubtedly  have  done  so,  but  for 
the  conviction  that  they  were  no  longer  strange, 
and  that,  at  all  events,  they  would  not  seem 
strange  to  him.  Besides,  he  had  already  trav- 
elled. He  was  seeking  a  strangeness  that  went 
deeper  than  well-known  changes  of  climate  and 
costume  and  speech.  He  sought: 

.     .     .     "  a  drink  more  deadly  and  more  strange 
Than  ever  grew  on  any  earthly  vine  " ; 

and  his  search  was  all  the  more  hopeless  because 
he  knew  that  he  had  finally  found  what  he  was 
seeking. 


22       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

He  knew  that  nothing  would  ever  seem  strange 
to  him  again,  except  the  face  that  was  with  him 
night  and  day.  Therefore,  his  search  was  only 
half-hearted,  and  he  soon  gave  up  any  serious 
thought  of  it.  In  fact,  he  ceased  to  be  a  serious 
being  altogether.  As  far  as  possible,  he  locked 
up  his  real  self,  as  he  thought,  in  a  safe  place, 
and  prepared  to  take  life  as  lightly  as  some 
friends  of  his,  whose  sad  laughing  faces  he  began 
to  understand;  to  live  it  as  a  very  light  com- 
edy. He  had  once  said  that  life  was  a  tragedy 
with  intervals  of  farce.  He  proposed  to  live  it 
as  a  farce,  with  as  few  intervals  of  tragedy  as 
possible. 

He  early  began  to  note  certain  changes  in  his 
nature.  He  who  had  always  loved  solitude  sud- 
denly discovered  that  he  dreaded  to  be  alone. 
So  he  fell  upon  the  scientific  discovery  —  and 
sorrow  is  a  far  greater  discoverer  than  Newton  — 
of  Society  as  an  Anodyne.  He  had  often  won- 
dered, austerely  occupied  with  his  art,  why  men 
and  women,  year  after  year,  paced  the  dull  round 
of  social  life,  flocked  so  talkatively  to  dull  din- 
ners, dull  luncheons,  dull  receptions,  dull  wed- 
dings. Now  he  began  to  understand.  These 
were  serious  people  who  dare  not  be  serious. 
Like  madmen,  it  was  not  safe  for  them  to  be 
left  alone  with  their  thoughts.  Any  society  was 


Some  Poor  Alternatives  23 

better  than  their  own.  Society  was  a  place  where 
they  might,  literally,  laugh  at  their  terrors,  pro- 
fanely mock  their  hearts'  tragedies  to  each  other 
in  glittering  talk;  as  in  plague-stricken  cities  of 
old  time  men  and  women  flouted  the  fear  of  death 
with  terrible  toasts  —  an  eternal  emblem  of  the 
mirth  of  society.  So  it  was  that  Wasteneys  be- 
came a  diner-out,  a  talker,  a  maker  of  mots.  Ah  ! 

"  Was  it  for  this  that  he  had  given  away 
His  ancient  wisdom  and  austere  control  ?  " 

Sometimes  unseen  he  would  shed  a  tear  into  his 
wine-glass,  and  next  moment  present  it  to  his 
neighbor  as  a  pearl  of  wit.  Champagne  has  this 
curious  effect  upon  tears.  The  aphoristic  influ- 
ence of  sorrow  is  one  of  the  strangest  things 
about  it.  Of  course,  there  were  those  who  under- 
stood. Society  is  very  clever.  One  of  Was- 
teneys' friends,  who  had  never  yet  had  to  face 
anything  real,  and  had,  therefore,  remained  seri- 
ous, once  asked  Wasteneys  what  was  wrong  with 
him. 

"  There  is  a  ghastly  burning  in  your  face,  old 
man,"  he  had  said;  "what's  the  trouble?" 

"Witty  degeneration  of  the  heart,"  Wasteneys 
had  answered  —  and  the  phrase  was  something 
more  than  a  cheap  epigram. 

Wasteneys  noted  too  that  he  began  to  weary 


24       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

of,  positively  dislike,  good  people;  not  because 
they  were  good,  but  because  they  were  serious. 
Really  bad  people  he  disliked  still  more,  because 
they  were  still  more  serious.  Any  one  who  was 
really  doing  or  being  something  strenuously  suc- 
cessful he  fled  from  as  from  a  North-Easter. 
More  and  more  he  sought  the  companionship  of 
the  seriously  unsuccessful;  the  men  who  talked 
brilliantly  of  what  they  might  have  done,  and 
were,  of  course,  still  going  to  do.  Men  with 
strong  brains  and  weak  wills;  idealistic  drunk- 
ards, who  grew  Titanic  with  creative  energy, 
though  they  never  moved  from  their  chairs;  all 
sad  men  who  talked,  and  from  whose  lips  rose 
the  fairy  bubbles  of  dreams  that  would  exist  for- 
ever in  no  other  form.  Over  these  he  grew 
compassionate. 

There  was  one  man,  a  fat,  beaming,  silvery 
voice  of  failure,  to  whom  his  heart  was  particu- 
larly drawn,  and  whom  he  pet-named  "  Coleridge* 
—  a  man  of  "commanding"  brain,  a  brain,  how- 
ever, which  could  never  be  induced  to  give  the 
word  of  command.  The  wonderful  dreams  "  Cole- 
ridge "  extemporized  in  obscure  bar-parlors,  the 
flights  of  angels  that  ascended  and  descended  the 
bright  rays  of  his  talk,  the  wisdom  of  this  unwise 
man !  Wasteneys'  heart  ached  sometimes  to  hear 
him  talk  all  that  fine  brain  and  beautiful  spirit 


Some  Poor  Alternatives  25 

into  the  air.  And  the  irony  of  so-called  success 
and  so-called  failure  was  revealed  to  him  as  he 
reflected  that,  but  for  the  divine  accident  of 
"  Kubla  Khan,"  the  real  Coleridge  had  been  for- 
gotten as  his  poor  nick-named  "  Coleridge  "  will 
be  forgotten.  Yes!  Coleridge's  was  a  narrow 
escape  indeed!  And  how  kind,  after  all,  is  the 
judgment  of  the  world  that  will  forgive  all  for 
one  handful  of  strange  rhyme. 

On  the  night  of  his  introduction  to  the  reader, 
Wasteneys  had  dined  alone,  and,  the  unaccus- 
tomed loneliness  weighing  upon  him,  he  had 
suddenly  thought  of  "Coleridge."  Knowing  too 
well  where  that  divine  gasometer  was  always  to 
be  found  about  ten  in  the  evening,  he  had  saun- 
tered out  to  a  certain  old-fashioned  tavern  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Covent  Garden,  once  perhaps 
the  resort  of  polite  wits  in  days  long  past,  from 
which  days  externally  it  still  preserved  a  certain 
distinction  —  the  kind  of  distinction  that  be- 
longs to  a  ripe  Stilton  —  but  now  a  sad,  silly 
place  of  joyless  drinking  and  rotting  epileptic 
brains. 

Wasteneys  was  too  good  for  the  place,  as  in- 
deed was  "Coleridge,"  but,  having  once  been 
taken  there  by  accident  and  met  "Coleridge," 
he  had  sometimes  dropped  in  to  meet  him  again. 
"  Coleridge  "  kept  on  there  from  old  habit,  a  habit 


26       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

begun  in  the  better  days  of  the  house.  It  was 
indeed  his  club.  His  letters  came  there,  and  a 
certain  leather  chair  in  the  chimney  corner  was 
tacitly  regarded  as  his  private  library.  There  he 
wrote  his  letters,  received  his  friends,  and  occa- 
sionally dozed  over  a  well-thumbed  classic;  and 
I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  add  that  "  Coleridge  " 
was  always  treated  with  great  respect.  Poor  and 
shabby  as  he  was,  thought  had  thrown  over  him 
its  indefinable  distinction.  He  was  received 
with  a  deference  similar  to  that  which  we  in- 
voluntarily pay  to  the  humblest  priest.  Though 
irreclaimably  devoted  to  gin-and-water,  he  was 
none  the  less  recognized  as,  shall  I  say,  an  un- 
frocked priest  of  the  humanities. 

Wasteneys  shouldered  his  way  through  a  pha- 
lanx of  men  drinking  at  an  outer  bar,  and  emerged 
on  a  quaint  inner  room,  where  prints  of  dead  actors 
and  old  play-bills  looked  down  upon  the  throng 
of  men  and  women  drinking  and  talking  in  knots 
in  a  thick  atmosphere  of  tobacco  smoke.  Only 
one  chair  in  the  room  was  vacant.  "  Coleridge  " 
had  not  yet  arrived.  Wasteneys  presumed  to 
occupy  the  chair,  pending  his  arrival. 

Looking  round  the  room,  he  was  glad  to  find 
that  he  knew  no  one.  To-night  the  place  filled 
him  with  more  than  his  usual  disgust  and  pity. 
So  this  was  pleasure!  he  thought  to  himself  as 


Some  Poor  Alternatives  27 

he  looked  around:  this  —  pleasure!  Fancy  any 
one  taking  this  for  —  pleasure.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  was  perhaps  no  one  in  that  room  who 
did.  Surely  it  was  not  those  plain,  worn-out, 
patched-up  women.  Surely  it  was  not  those 
heavy-eyed,  flushed,  unfathomably  melancholy 
men.  Why  then  did  they  come  here  day  after 
day,  night  after  night?  What  was  the  spell 
beneath  the  unutterable  dreariness?  Heaven 
knows!  Perhaps  they  had  begun  going  there 
because  some  one  had  told  them  that  there  the 
nightingale  of  pleasure  might  be  heard  singing 
towards  midnight.  Sometimes,  maybe,  they  had 
thought  they  had  heard  it  —  and  so  came  and 
came  in  the  hope  of  hearing  it  again.  Thus  a 
deferred  hope  had  developed  a  confirmed  habit  — 
and  a  habit  is  enough  reason. 

As  Wasteneys  watched  them,  fascinated,  his 
imagination  saw  them  in  shuddering  and  revolt- 
ing forms.  Sometimes  he  saw  them  as  animal 
symbols  of  horrible  vices,  leering,  slithering 
creatures,  with  reptile  and  hoggish  forms.  He 
watched  diseases  genially  shaking  hands,  with  a 
fearful  unconsciousness  of  what  they  were,  drunk- 
ards who  never  dreamed  they  were  "drunkards;" 
women  who  still  spoke,  and  even  thought,  of 
themselves  as  women  —  creatures  unspeakably 
unattractive,  to  whom  silly  old  men,  bald  and 


28       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

ape-like,  gibbered  senile  compliments  with  hor- 
rible airs  of  boyhood. 

Wasteneys  turned  his  face  from  them,  over- 
come with  nausea  of  the  spirit,  and  took  a  book 
from  his  pocket,  as  in  an  infected  place  one  goes 
through  the  streets  with  a  pomander  of  purifying 
spices  at  one's  nostrils.  It  was  a  strange  book 
indeed  to  be  reading  in  that  place,  and  it  was  in 
his  pocket  by  an  accident  of  forgetfulness.  He 
had  bought  it  a  day  or  two  before  merely  for  its 
format.  It  was  a  particularly  beautiful  little  edi- 
tion of  "The  Pilgrim's  Progress"! 

Owing  to  his  early  Catholic  training,  he  had 
never  read  it  as  a  child,  nor,  till  this  moment, 
had  it  since  fallen  in  his  way.  He  opened  it 
with  some  curiosity.  Had  the  book,  he  was 
wondering,  any  spiritual  message  for  a  modern 
man,  for  a  man  like  him?  He  opened  it  at 
random,  and  one  of  those  things  happened  which 
had  happened  so  often  in  his  reading  that  he  had 
grown  to  be  an  almost  serious  consultant  of  the 
sortes  litterarum.  This  was  the  passage  that  first 
met  his  eye : 

"  Thou  didst  faint  at  first  setting  out,  when  thou  wast 
almost  choked  in  the  Gulf  of  Despond ;  thou  diddest 
attempt  wrong  ways  to  be  rid  of  thy  burden,  whereas 
thou  shouldest  have  stayed  till  thy  Prince  had  taken  it 
off:  Thou  didst  sinfully  sleep  and  loose  thy  choice 


Some  Poor  Alternatives  29 

thing :  Thou  wast  also  almost  persuaded  to  go  back,  at 
the  sight  of  the  Lions ;  and  when  thou  talkest  of  thy 
Journey,  and  of  what  thou  hast  heard  and  seen,  thou 
art  inwardly  desirous  of  vainglory  in  all  that  thou  sayest 
or  doest." 

He  put  the  book  down.  His  eyes  were  sud- 
denly smitten  with  a  gust  of  tears,  like  an  April 
window.  Had  this  old  book  a  message  for  his 
modern  heart?  —  a  message  for  a  man  like  him? 
Had  it  not  ?  His  foul  surroundings  became  in- 
stantly more  than  ever  insupportable.  He  rose 
to  leave  the  place ;  but,  as  he  did  so,  the  proprie- 
tress, who  had  hitherto  been  absent,  a  painted 
fungus  of  a  woman  in  black  satin,  came  forward, 
smiling  with  horrible  cordiality.  Did  he  expect 

Mr. ?  Had  he  not  heard  the  sad  news?  Mr. 

had  died  suddenly  yesterday  morning,  in  the 

act  of  dressing. 

" '  Coleridge  '  dead  ?  "  exclaimed  Wasteneys, 
"  poor  old  '  Coleridge  '  dead  ?  That 's  too  bad  !  " 
and  he  turned  and  looked  at  his  chair  affection- 
ately. Then  suddenly  —  "  Mrs.  ,  will  you 

sell  me  this  chair?  Have  it  taken  upstairs  at 
once.  No  one  here  must  ever  sit  in  his  chair 
again !  " 

The  proprietress  assented  to  his  whim,  and, 
having  learnt  the  day  of  the  funeral,  Wasteneys 
went  out  into  the  street. 


30       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"To  think  of  it  —  '  old  Coleridge  '—  dead !  " 
he  repeated  to  himself  as  he  walked  back  to  his 
rooms. 

And  then  there  came  back  to  him  the  solemn 
sentences  which  for  the  moment  the  news  had 
driven  from  his  mind:  "Thou  diddest  attempt 
wrong  ways  to  be  rid  of  thy  burden.  .  .  .  Thou 
didst  sinfully  sleep  and  loose  thy  choice  thing." 
Sorrow  had  made  him  superstitious  —  a  not  un- 
common effect  of  sorrow;  and  it  seemed  to  him 
worth  thinking  that  he  had  read  those  words  in 
"Coleridge's"  chair.  What  if  "Coleridge's" 
dead  hand  had  turned  the  pages  and  invisibly 
pointed  to  that  passage! 

"  Thou  diddest  attempt  wrong  ways  to  be  rid  of  thy 
burden.  Thou  didst  sinfully  sleep  and  loose  thy  choice 
thing." 

"It  is  quite  true,"  he  said  to  himself. 

And  old  "  Coleridge  "  was  dead  !  Why  should 
he  have  had  the  impulse  to  go  to  that  place  just 
on  this  particular  night?  He  had  not  been  there 
for  weeks.  Was  not  this  another  warning? 
Warnings  had  been  coming  to  him  of  late.  Even 
silly  little  women  had  turned  prophetesses,  and 
gravely  told  him  that  he  was  wasting  his  life. 
Out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings!  So 
he  pondered  as  he  walked  homewards  —  and  then 


Some  Poor  Alternatives  31 

suddenly  the  unconscious  need  of  weeks  found 
expression.  Looking  at  his  watch,  he  saw  that 
there  was  still  time  to  catch  the  last  train  to  his 
country  home.  A  great  longing  for  green  leaves, 
the  stars  and  the  fresh  country  night,  had  come 
upon  him.  He  suddenly  realized  that  he  had 
been  choking  for  that  pure  air,  and  it  seemed 
to  him  that  to  sleep  another  night  in  London 
would  stifle  him.  So  it  was  that,  an  hour  and 
a  half  afterwards,  the  train  had  set  him  down 
in  the  moonlight  of  a  Surrey  common. 

O,  the  clean  moon,  and  all  the  silent  trees ! 


CHAPTER  VI 

A   MOON-BATH 

WASTENEYS  walked  the  two  moonlit 
miles  of  country  road  to  his  old  home 
in  an  ecstasy  of  purification. 

"  Yes !  nature  is  moral,"  he  said  to  himself, 
"  nature  is  terribly  pure  and  sane.  But  how  sweet 
to  be  pure  and  sane !  " 

He  lifted  up  his  face  into  the  moonlight,  bathing 
and  bathing  it  in  the  clean  and  holy  light.  The 
moon  and  he  seemed  to  be  the  only  waking  beings 
in  the  world.  In  soft  lines  of  repose  the  earth  lay 
beneath  the  moon  like  a  sleeping  woman,  tenderly 
veiled  in  mist  and  shadow.  The  moon  seemed  to 
be  taking  care  of  the  world.  Dreaming  shapes  of 
hill  and  wood,  himself  and  the  moon.  O,  the  clean 
moon ! 

Wasteneys  had  been  born  with  a  face  constitu- 
tionally pure  —  and  he  still  came,  as  a  line  in  one 
of  his  poems  expressed  it,  "  with  a  pure  face  from 
a  thousand  sins !  "  The  reason,  of  course,  was  that 
he  had  never  been  able  to  take  "  sin,"  so-called, 
seriously  —  just  as  he  could  not  have  seriously 
over-eaten  himself.  He  had,  it  is  true,  experi- 
mented with  various  "  sins,"  which  had  a  reputa- 


A  Moon-Bath  33 

tion  for  inducing  forgetfulness,  as  one  tries  the 
authenticated  medical  specifics  for  affections  of  the 
nerves.  But  to  take  "  sin  "  seriously  !  Why,  he 
would  as  soon  have  thought  of  substituting  a 
sleeping-draught  for  his  wine  at  dinner. 

Yet  bad  medicines,  in  addition  to  doing  no  good, 
do  harm  as  well,  and  Wasteneys  was  obliged  to 
admit  that  his  experiments  in  spiritual  medicine 
had  resulted  in  a  certain  spiritual  deterioration, 
almost  humorously  empirical  though  they  had 
been.  His  spiritual  constitution  had  been  im- 
paired, his  spiritual  complexion  had  suffered.  So 
again  and  again  he  bathed  his  face  in  the  moon. 
To  himself  his  face  felt  grimy  with  sensual  living. 
Too  seldom  of  late  had  it  been  bathed  from 
within  with  the  bright  stream  of  high  thoughts, 
too  seldom  bathed  from  without  with  the  cleans- 
ing radiance  of  seriously  beautiful  things. 

He  seemed  to  feel  it  growing  cleaner  as  he 
washed  it  in  that  vestal  light.  As  a  boy  he  had 
thought  of  the  moon  as  an  amorous  goddess. 
To-night  her  face  was  the  face  of  a  nun.  So  nature, 
having  no  ascertainably  definite  meaning,  means 
all  things  to  us  all.  Once  the  moon  had  seemed 
pale  with  passion,  to-night  she  was  pale  with 
purity :  for  to-night  Wasteneys  was  passionate  to 
be  pure ! 

O,  the  clean  moon! 

3 


CHAPTER  VII 

"AND   O,  YE    FOUNTAINS,   MEADOWS,   HILLS 
AND   GROVES " 

NEXT  morning  Wasteneys  was  up  as  early 
as   the   young   man  in   Gray's  "  Elegy.'* 
With  what   eager  steps   he  brushed  the 
dew  away !     He  was  as  impatient  as  the  Eastern 
king   for  the  purifying  river :   the  purifying  river 
of  the  morning  air. 

He  had  looked  carefully  at  his  face,  as  he 
dressed  in  the  strange  light  of  the  summer  dawn. 
Yes !  The  moonlight  had  helped.  As  he  had 
stepped  from  his  bath  he  was  almost  boisterous 
with  moral  determination.  "  I  feel  as  if  I  could 
fight  all  the  gods  and  all  the  devils !  "  he  cried 
aloud. 

"  You  will  have  an  opportunity,  never  fear," 
whispered  a  cautious  voice  within  his  soul. 

His  eagerness  swept  him  before  long  to  the 
glittering  freshness  of  a  green  hill,  whence  he 
could  look  with  pathos  and  exaltation  upon  his 
own  home,  from  the  chimneys  of  which  there 
curled  as  yet  no  early-rising  smoke.  The  country- 
side lay  as  still  and  sleepy  as  last  night  in  the 
moonlight,  and  the  sun  was  as  yet  the  only  living 


"And  O,  Ye  Fountains"  35 

thing  at  work.  Wasteneys  realized  how  much  the 
purity  of  country  air  comes  of  solitude,  of  having 
the  world  to  oneself.  So  soon  as  human  figures 
began  to  move  about  the  village,  Wasteneys  took 
his  eyes  from  the  village  of  Wasteneys,  and  sought 
deeper  recesses  of  the  morning. 

The  hawthorn  was  hanging  on  the  hedges,  and 
to  a  man  sad  and  sinful  from  the  town,  it  was 
heart-breaking  to  listen  to  the  birds.  The  least 
bit  of  a  bird  seemed  an  emperor  of  joy.  O,  the 
lovers  in  the  hedges  —  the  calls  —  the  answers! 

"  Be  quick  — 
Be  quick  — 
Be  quick  — 
Quick ! 
Be  quick  ! 
Sweet ! 
Sweet ! 
Sweet ! 

Sweet  —  i  —  ki ! 
Sweet  — i — ki ! 
Sweet  —  i  —  ki ! 
Chuck  —  chuck 

Twe-ey  —  Twe-ey  —  Twe-ey." 

It  seemed  centuries  since  Wasteneys  had  heard 
a  bird  sing.  In  fact  he  had  almost  forgotten  that 
there  were  birds. 

Wherever  his  eye  turned,  or  his  ear  listened,  he 
was  met  with  the  rectitude  and  chastity  of  nature ! 
Indeed,  Nature  was  almost  self-righteous  in  her 


36       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

asceticism.  How  business-like  she  was  about  her 
beauty;  how  methodical  with  her  flowers.  It  was 
wonderful  to  think  that  not  once  in  all  the  ages  had 
she  missed  bringing  in  the  hawthorn  at  its  due 
season,  not  once  disappointed  mankind  of  the 
cuckoo.  Punctually  each  year  the  wild-rose  had 
bloomed,  punctually  faded  and  fallen  on  the  grass, 
punctually  the  nightingale  had  sung.  Not  once 
had  the  moon  failed  to  pass  melodiously  from  silver 
change  to  change,  nor  was  there  any  recorded 
year  in  which  the  trees  had  neglected  to  bud,  the 
birds  to  build,  or  the  swallows  to  fly  south. 

All  around  him  Wasteneys  watched  each  natural 
thing  strenuously  doing  its  appointed  work.  For 
no  private  grief  might  the  law  of  gravitation  leave 
its  task,  nor  any  natural  law  halt  a  moment  to 
gratify  some  personal  whim. 

He  beheld  nature  as  the  great  martinet,  and, 
with  something  of  shame,  he  asked  himself:  How 
was  he  taking  his  place  in  this  vast  harmony?  He 
did  not  shirk  the  answer : 

11  Because  of  a  woman's  face,"  he  said  to  himself, 
"or  rather  because  you  cannot  look  upon  it  all 
day  —  it  is,  you  know,  somewhere  beautiful  in  the 
world,  that  should  be  enough  !  — you  have  thrown 
all  the  purpose  of  your  life  to  the  winds,  you  have 
allowed  your  faculties  to  rust,  you  have  mocked  at 
your  ideals,  you  have  lost  yourself." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

EASTER 

AS  Wasteneys  returned  home,  absorbed  in 
such  self-examination,  he  was  aroused  by 
the  ringing  of  church  bells.  It  was  Sun- 
day. He  had  forgotten.  There  was,  too,  in  the 
ringing  an  unusual  joyfulness.  Then  he  remem- 
bered that  it  was  Easter  morning.  And,  with  the 
remembrance,  he  thought  almost  for  the  first  time 
of  an  old  friend  to  whom  always  on  his  rare  visits 
home  he  hastened  to  pay  his  respects.  Wasteneys 
came  of  an  old  Catholic  family.  For  their  loyalty 
to  the  old  faith,  his  family  had  suffered  much  in 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  be- 
cause his  ancestors  had  hidden  priests  in  a  certain 
ingenious  chamber  still  shown  to  curious  visitors, 
Wasteneys  was  a  comparatively  poor  man  to-day. 
But  the  family  had  remained  faithful  throughout 
all  their  trials,  and  no  day  of  all  those  years  had 
passed  without  some  hand  placing  flowers  on  the 
altar  of  the  little  chapel  hidden  away  among  the 
Elizabethan  gables,  which  had  proved  a  spiritual 
refuge,  too,  for  the  handful  of  peasantry  who  also 
adhered  to  the  ancient  way  of  faith.  There  had 


38       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

never  been  a  time  when  there  had  been  no  chaplain 
at  Wasteneys,  and,  though  Pagan  Wasteneys  had 
long  since  abandoned  the  creed  of  his  fathers,  he 
still  kept  up  that  tradition :  partly  from  reverence 
to  the  memory  of  his  mother,  who,  after  a  long 
widowhood,  had  died  six  years  before,  partly  be- 
cause he  felt  a  spiritual  obligation  not  to  deprive 
his  dependents  of  their  immemorial  altar,  and 
perhaps  mainly  for  love  of  the  old  father,  under 
whose  eye  his  young  mind  had  opened,  and  whose 
beautiful  old  face  was  as  necessary  in  his  thought 
of  home  as  the  old  home  itself. 

During  his  mother's  lifetime,  Wasteneys  had 
concealed  from  her  the  intellectual  change  that 
early  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  give  more  than 
an  external  adherence  to  the  Christian  faith;  but 
on  her  death  he  had  firmly  confessed  himself  to 
Father  Selden. 

The  old  man  knew  his  pupil  better  than  Waste- 
neys knew  himself,  and,  with  the  tact  of  his  church, 
he  had  refrained  from  interfering  with  what  he  re- 
garded—  with  the  sanction  of  long  experience  — 
as  one  of  those  processes  in  the  wayward  develop- 
ment of  the  human  soul,  which  in  certain  natures 
are  best  left  to  work  themselves  out. 

"  My  son,"  he  had  said  as  a  conclusion  to  their 
talk,  "  I  believe  it  is  God's  will  that  you  should 
wander  in  this  way.  For  some  natures  it  is 


Easter  39 

necessary  that  they  should  wander  long  in  the 
wilderness,  so  that  when  at  last  they  do  come 
home,  they  know  indeed  that  it  is  home.  You 
may  have  far  to  go,  my  poor  boy.  It  is  better, 
perhaps,  that  you  set  out  early  upon  your  pilgrim- 
age, that  you  may  the  sooner  come  back  home. 
I  shall  pray  for  you  quietly  here,  and  wait  your 
return.  I  do  not  fear  for  you.  You  belong  to 
God.  More  than  many  you  were  born  His  child. 
You  cannot  escape  His  love." 

These  words  had  often  come  back  to  Wasteneys 
during  these  last  sad  years.  Year  followed  year, 
but  the  father's  prophecy  seemed  further  and 
further  from  fulfilment.  Father  Selden  had  not 
failed  to  note  the  later  change  in  his  pupil,  a 
change  far  more  serious  than  a  mere  intellectual 
change.  Partly  divining  the  reason,  he  knew  that 
some  emotional  process  was  at  work,  and  he  wel- 
comed it  —  fearing  it  at  the  same  time.  Religion 
has  nothing,  in  the  end,  to  fear  from  human  reason. 
It  has  much  more  to  fear  or  hope  from  human 
love.  But  Father  Selden  was  more  glad  than 
fearful. 

"  If  he  loves  a  woman,"  he  said  to  himself,  "  he 
must  end  by  loving  God."  He  never  in  all  that 
time  revealed  to  Wasteneys  any  sign  of  anxiety  or 
impatience.  Nor  indeed  was  his  anxiety  great. 
The  way  might  seem  long,  but  the  end  was  sure. 


40       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

In  the  security  of  his  age,  he  often  felt  a  divine 
pity  for  the  young  life  struggling  there  in  the  maze 
of  existence,  turning  hither  and  thither,  breathless, 
bewildered,  almost  heart-broken,  apparently  with 
no  clue  to  the  way,  no  hint  of  the  meaning  of  it  all. 
But,  while  he  pitied,  the  old  man  smiled,  seeing 
with  clear  eyes  from  the  hill  of  his  vision  that 
those  very  mistakes,  those  wrong  turnings,  seem- 
ingly so  irremediable,  were  surely  bringing  him 
nearer  and  nearer  to  the  one  way  out,  the  way  of 
the  spirit. 

Meanwhile,  he  said  little  to  Wasteneys,  beyond 
an  occasional  friendly  exhortation,  given  with  one 
of  those  lovely  smiles  which  had  made  Wasteneys 
as  a  little  boy  think  of  his  face  as  the  very  gate  of 
Heaven.  Once  when  accidentally  he  had  come 
upon  Wasteneys  in  a  moment  of  deep  sadness,  he 
had  put  his  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"  Is  the  way  long,  my  son?  Fear  not,  you  are 
safe.  You  follow  a  light  you  cannot  see.  I  can 
see  it  for  you.  Be  brave.  You  will  understand 
some  day." 

And  Wasteneys  had  bowed  his  head,  and  thanked 
him  with  a  pressure  of  the  hand. 

All  this  came  back  to  him  with  great  force,  as 
he  hastened  home.  Father  Selden  would  be  in  the 
chapel  at  this  moment,  with  the  tiny  band  of  the 
country  faithful  around  him.  Wasteneys  deter- 


Easter  41 

mined  to  slip  in  and  take  his  place  in  a  small  gal- 
lery at  the  back  of  the  chapel,  where  he  could 
remain  unseen.  As  he  entered,  the  exquisite  little 
organ,  one  of  the  oldest  in  England,  was  sing- 
ing like  many  nightingales  the  resurrection  of 
Christ ;  and  his  heart  gave  a  strange  bound  of  joy 
as  the  beautiful  old  words  fell  upon  his  ear : 

"  Die,  nobis,  Maria,  quid  vidisti  in  via  ? 
Sepulcrum  Christi  viventis  et  gloriam  vidi  resurgentis." 

The  chapel  was  filled  with  the  breath  of  spring 
flowers,  but  it  was  not  the  music  and  the  perfume 
that  most  touched  his  heart.  They  were  not  so 
sweet  or  so  pure  as  the  old  man's  face  at  the  altar, 
and  from  these  simple  hearts  about  him  there  was 
rising  an  incense  of  adoring  faith  which  made  him 
sigh  and  bury  his  face  in  his  hands. 

For  all  these  Christ  had  risen.  For  him  only 
He  still  slept  on  in  the  unopening  tomb. 

In  a  dream  he  listened  to  the  chapter  which  to 
all  present  but  himself  was  the  veritable  history  of 
a  divine  event.  In  a  dream  the  hymn  filled  the 
little  chapel: 

"  O  Filii  et  Filiae, 

Rex  celestis,  Rex  gloriae  ! 
Morte  surrexit  hodie, 
Alleluia." 


42       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

And  presently  he  heard  the  reproof  of  Thomas : 

"  Vide,  Thoma,  vida  latus, 
Vide  pedes,  vide  manus  ; 
Noli  esse  incredulus. 
Alleluia." 

Something  deeper,  something  nobler,  than  reason 
rose  up  against  his  brains.  Why  did  he  still  doubt? 
Why  did  he  refuse  this  revelation  to  which  the 
innermost  soul  of  him  mysteriously  responded? 
"  Noli  esse  incredulus." 

Reason ! 

Reason?  Was  it  the  life  of  the  reason  that  he 
had  been  living  these  last  five  years?  Was  it  at 
the  dictate  of  reason  that  he  had  thrown  aside  all 
the  serious  purpose  of  his  life?  What  part  had 
reason  in  such  a  possession  as  that  to  which,  from 
the  first  moment  of  revelation,  he  had  given  un- 
questioning assent  and  service?  The  world  was 
full  of  beautiful  faces,  full  of  noble  women ;  why 
among  all  should  he  fix  his  choice  upon  one  face, 
one  woman,  that  could  never  be  his,  and  reject  all 
the  rest?  Was  this  reason?  Reason  had,  over  and 
over  again,  spoken  to  him  in  vain.  For  something 
had  told  him  that  here  he  knew  better  than  reason, 
that  this  passion  was  subject  to  a  higher,  more 
mysterious,  sanction.  And  the  instinct  which 
bade  him  hold  to  his  dream  of  human  love  in 
spite  of  reason,  was  the  same  instinct  that  was 


Easter  43 

appealing  to  him  this  morning  in  the  name  of 
the  Divine  Love.  He  had  accepted  the  lesser  rev- 
elation, in  spite  of  reason.  Could  he  reject  the 
greater  on  a  pretence  which  had  been  unequal  to 
dismissing  the  lesser?  Even  reason  itself  protested 
against  the  anomaly. 

Ah,  could  he  but  see  the  face  of  God  as  clearly 
as  he  could  see  that  face  which  was  with  him  night 
and  day,  the  face  which  rose  up  in  the  music,  and 
in  the  breath  of  the  flowers.  Could  it  be  that  it 
was  this  face  that  hid  from  him  the  face  of  God? 

Father  Selden  was  secretly  very  happy  at 
Wasteneys'  coming  home  in  this  way  and  at  this 
season.  Accustomed,  too,  to  read  the  visible  signs 
of  the  soul  in  the  face,  he  saw  something  in  Was- 
teneys' face  which  seemed  to  tell  him  that  his 
prophecy  was  slowly  fulfilling  itself.  But  of  this 
he  said  nothing  to  his  pupil.  Perhaps  he  was 
a  thought  more  tender  to  him,  indefinably  infusing 
into  his  smile  and  his  hand-grasp  an  unobtrusive 
sympathy  too  subtle  to  claim  a  conscious  recogni- 
tion. No  more  than  that.  Father  Selden  was  too 
wise  a  fisher  of  men. 

"  The  soul,"  he  used  to  say,  "  is  like  a  little 
frightened  bird  that  hops  and  hops  in  sight  of  the 
heavenly  food,  then  suddenly  flies  away ;  and  then 
as  suddenly  comes  and  hops  and  hops  again  a 


44       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

little  nearer.  Some  would  encourage  it  with 
friendly  calls,  but  those  only  alarm  it,  and  the 
more  we  call  it  the  further  off  it  stands,  for  the 
soul  is  very  shy.  Best  to  pretend  not  to  notice. 
Sooner  or  later,  if  we  leave  it  alone,  it  will  gain 
heart  and  carry  off  one  crumb  of  the  bread  of 
life,  and  then  another." 

So  it  seemed  to  Father  Selden  that  the  soul 
of  Pagan  Wasteneys  —  animula,  vagula,  blandula, 
was  coming  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  heavenly 
bread,  like  a  timid,  long-wandering  bird. 


CHAPTER  IX 

OLD  WALLS  AND  YOUNG  DAYS 

NATURE,  as  we  have  seen,  had  straightly 
impeached  Wasteneys  with  his  way  of 
life,  his  forgetfulness  of  his  old  vision 
of  her;  religion  had  appealed  to  him  once  more, 
and  at  a  moment  when  his  ears  were  open,  and  his 
heart  prepared  to  understand,  as  never  in  his  life 
before;  but  nature  had  not  been  so  stern  in  her 
impeachment  of  him,  nor  religion  so  persuasive, 
as  his  old  home,  every  stone  of  which  seemed  to 
have  been  cemented  with  the  earnestness  and  in- 
tegrity of  serious  ancestors,  and  in  every  room  of 
which  still  sang  the  memories  of  his  happy  and 
beautiful  boyhood. 

It  was  not  a  great  or  famous  house,  but  all  the 
more  significant  was  the  general  air  of  firmness 
with  which  it  had  been  set  down  upon  the  land. 
It  was  evident  that  its  builders  had  meant  it  to 
endure.  Resolution  and  purpose  were  in  every 
line  of  it,  distinction  in  every  curve.  The  more 
credit  to  his  ancestors,  who  had  been  in  no  way 
illustrious,  but  men  and  women  of  the  common 


46       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

strength  and  virtue.  There  were  rooms  the  mere 
shape  and  proportions  of  which  were  like  a  chap- 
ter in  Marcus  Aurelius.  Wasteneys  sat  long  in 
them,  hoping  that  something  of  the  force  they 
still  stored  might  pass  into  him. 

Very  marvellous  is  this  impressibility  of  material 
surroundings  to  the  lives  that  are  lived  among 
them.  We  build  or  we  furnish  a  house  to  suit  our 
own  comfort  and  taste,  as  it  pleases  us,  or  as  we 
must;  we  die,  and  our  sons  inherit  us,  and  live 
their  lives,  and  maybe  add  rooms  and  furniture  in 
accordance  with  their  comfort  and  their  taste,  and 
so  generation  follows  generation ;  and,  meanwhile, 
from  all  these  lives  something  impalpable  has  been 
passing  into  the  very  walls,  and,  in  some  myste- 
rious way,  the  old  house  has  become  a  reservoir 
of  persuasive,  even  compelling,  influence.  One  is 
conscious  of  this  influence  even  in  an  old  house 
in  which  we  dwell  for  awhile  as  strangers,  and  to 
which  we  are  bound  by  no  ancestry  of  occupation. 
How  much  more  powerful  must  that  influence  be 
when  the  house  we  inherit  has  been  lived  in  by 
men  and  women  of  our  own  blood  for  centuries. 
Who  has  not  vibrated  to  the  stored  courage  in  a 
noble  name?  An  old  house  that  has  been  bravely 
and  beautifully  lived  in  has  just  this  power  of 
bracing  influence ;  and  for  a  man  who  possesses 
such  an  old  home,  to  come  back  to  it  is  to  con- 


Old  Walls  and  Young  Days         47 

nect  himself  with  a  hundred  currents  of  energizing 
ancestral  force. 

Wasteneys  felt  his  old  home  crying  out  against 
him  from  every  corner.  Everywhere  was  purpose, 
control,  order,  content.  He  took  refuge  from  its 
impeachment  in  the  dim  gallery  where  hung 
many  portraits  of  his  ancestors.  With  a  certain 
wistfulness  he  scanned  their  faces,  as  though  in 
search  of  sympathy.  Had  they  all  been  strong 
and  successful  and  content?  Was  there  no  face 
amongst  them  that  seemed  to  hint  a  prophecy  of 
his  own  life  ?  One  vague  sad  face  there  was,  the 
face  of  a  woman,  of  whom  the  legend  ran  that  she 
had  died  of  love ;  but  there  was  little  except  her 
weakness  to  distinguish  her  from  the  rest.  And 
he  was  seeking  sympathy  in  no  pathetic  face  of 
failure ;  but  rather  in  some  proud  strong  face  that 
plainly  told  of  a  world  lost  which  it  had  not  cared 
to  win.  Love  may  be  as  strong  losing  as  winning, 
stronger  maybe.  That  face  he  sought  in  vain. 

Of  all  the  rooms  of  his  old  home  that  thus 
called  upon  him  to  come  out  of  his  dream  and 
do  his  destined  work,  it  was  his  library,  as  might 
be  expected,  which  called  to  him  with  the  most 
definite  and  the  most  moving  voice.  There  the 
strenuous  intellectual  struggles  of  his  boyhood 
and  young  manhood  had  taken  place,  there  he 
had  nobly  aspired  to  follow  the  great  masters  in 


48       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

the  greatest  of  all/the  arts.  Their  names  as  he 
looked  round  his  shelves  seemed  to-day  terribly 
victorious,  and  sternly  reproachful.  He  smiled 
sadly  as  he  recalled  the  ardor  with  which  he  had 
once  echoed  another's  cry: 

"  Oh  that  my  name  were  numbered  among  theirs, 
Then  gladly  would  I  end  my  mortal  days." 

The  poet  who  uttered  that  cry  had  indeed  suc- 
ceeded in  his  desire.  His  name  stood  for  a  fact 
in  the  world  of  the  mind.  When  it  was  spoken,  it 
had  a  definite  meaning,  like  the  name  of  a  color. 
As  Wasteneys'  eyes  passed  from  one  great  name 
to  another,  he  realized,  with  a  new  thrill  of  ambi- 
tion and  despair,  what  to  make  a  name  really 
means. 

To  have  lived  so  forcibly,  with  such  vivid  signifi- 
cance, and  so  to  have  charged  a  few  handfuls  of 
words  with  the  dynamic  potency  of  your  spirit; 
or  maybe  to  have  lived  so  graciously,  with  such 
sweet  perfume  of  living,  and  so  to  have  impreg- 
nated a  few  handfuls  of  words  with  an  undying 
sweetness ;  that  your  name  alone  means  all  you 
have  done  and  all  you  have  been :  is  not  all  that 
meant  when  we  put  a  name  on  a  binding  —  a 
name  alone? 

"  Dante."  There  is  no  need  to  explain.  There 
is  no  need  to  print  the  name  in  full,  for  fear  of 


Old  Walls  and  Young  Days         49 

mistake,  no  need  to  explain  that  the  volume 
contains  the  works  of  Messer  Dante  Alighieri 
of  Florence  —  a  certain  vision  in  three  books. 
So  soon  as  we  see  the  name  we  say  to  our- 
selves :  Beatrice  —  Florence  —  Hell  —  Purgatory 
—  and  Heaven.  Such  beautiful  and  mighty  mean- 
ings was  a  great  man  able  to  concentrate  in  a 
little  name  of  five  letters:  the  love  of  woman, 
the  love  of  country,  the  fear  of  hell,  the  pains  of 
purgatory,  the  love  of  God. 

Wasteneys  wrote  out  his  own  name.  Alas !  he 
had  not  yet  made  one  letter  of  it !  "  It  is  such  a 
long  name  !  "  he  said,  taking  shelter  in  a  sad  laugh, 
which  was  far  indeed  from  real  laughter.  Such 
laughter  is  either  the  despair  or  the  cowardice  of 
the  disappointed  spirit. 

But  he  could  not  laugh,  even  so  superficially  as 
that,  when  from  time  to  time  he  took  down  some 
classic  which  he  had  strenuously  read  and  care- 
fully marked,  years  before,  and  found  the  mes- 
sages which  his  youth  had  left  there  for  his  middle 
age.  Ah !  how  strong  that  boy  has  been,  how 
stern  of  purpose,  how  pure  of  heart,  how  sure  of 
the  heavenly  vision ! 

Scattered  up  and  down  his  books  were  flowers. 
They  had  nothing  to  do  with  love.  They  were 
keepsakes  of  the  spirit.  Wasteneys  had  long 
since  forgotten  their  special  reference,  but  their 

4 


50       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

general  significance  his  aching  heart  well  knew. 
How  many  spring  mornings  they  stood  for,  when, 
wandering  through  the  fields  in  the  early  dew,  the 
heavens  had  opened,  and  voices  of  thrilling  certi- 
tude had  proclaimed  to  him  the  spiritual  order  of 
the  universe.  Ah !  to  be  caught  up  once  more 
by  that  angelic  singing,  to  wander  once  more,  an 
inspired  boy,  up  the  stairways  of  the  morning 
star. 

"  Sing  me  a  song  of  a  boy  that  is  gone  — 
Say  can  that  boy  be  I  ?  " 

But  whence  and  how  had  come  the  change? 
He  was  still  young,  still  strong,  his  heart  was  still 
pure,  if  the  surface  of  his  life  was  —  not  indelibly 
—  stained. 

A  woman's  face  !     A  woman's  face  ! 

Fool! 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  MEADOW   OF   REMEMBRANCE 

THROUGH  three  of  the  morning  weeks 
of  the  year  Wasteneys  lived  in  the  lus- 
tral  solitude  of  nature,  and  meanwhile  he 
gradually  recovered  an  old  understanding  with 
her,  an  almost  forgotten  relationship.  As  a  boy, 
ten  years  before,  it  was  not  indeed  as  a  tonic,  a 
spiritual  regimen,  that  he  had  sought  her.  Then 
it  had  seemed  enough  reason  for  life  to  be  allowed 
to  look  in  her  face,  to  gaze  into  it  in  those  long 
trances  of  pantheistic  ecstasy,  which,  as  he  thought 
back  upon  his  life,  seemed  to  be  the  most  com- 
plete moments  of  existence.  There  is  that  union 
between  the  universe  and  its  unit,  as  of  mother 
and  child,  which  is  entirely  absorbing  and  satisfy- 
ing. The  child  asks  only  the  mother's  breast,  only 
her  smile  as  he  lies  feeding  there.  So  there  are 
certain  temperaments  which  are  still  so  filially  at- 
tached to  the  great  Mother,  that  her  love  and  her 
beauty  are  all  they  need.  The  mystic  relation  be- 
tween them  and  what  we  call  nature  suffices  them. 
They  are  so  filled  with  "  the  All"  that  they  are 
independent  of  the  contributory  unit.  Anchorites 


5  2       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

of  green  loneliness,  monks  of  the  morning  star,  a 
great  dream  has  set  them  free  from  the  lesser 
dependencies  of  humanity.  As  a  boy,  Wasteneys 
had  known  that  mystic  rapport  with  nature  in  rare 
completeness.  Now,  as  he  found  himself  regain- 
ing it,  he  realized  with  a  pang  how  complete,  too, 
the  intervening  estrangement  had  been. 

Now  he  saw  that  all  these  years  during  which 
he  had  laid  up  his  treasure  in  one  human  face, 
nature  had  been  to  him  as  half-heeded  spectacular 
scenery  for  the  human  drama.  When  the  great 
stage  had  been  empty  of  human  figures,  he  had 
been  overborne  with  an  oppressive,  almost  terrify- 
ing loneliness.  And  once  the  lonely  summer  night 
had  seemed  like  a  room  full  of  friends.  But  this 
noble  friendship  was  being  day  by  day  more  and 
more  restored  to  him.  Again  he  felt,  or  thought 
he  felt,  that  the  complete  human  life  is  lived  as 
a  unit.  The  man  alone,  and  yet  not  alone;  the 
woman  alone,  and  yet  not  alone  —  and  the  uni- 
verse. Again  he  felt,  or  thought  he  felt,  mysteri- 
ous sustenance  streaming  into  him  out  of  the  air. 
He  was  the  mother's  child  again.  The  human 
prodigal  had  come  back  home.  Lost  satisfactions 
were  his  once  more,  complete  moments  filled  with 
deep  content.  There  were  hours,  even  days,  in 
which  he  felt  as  whole-heartedly  at  home  in  the 
world  as  a  child,  hours  and  days  unmarred  by  that 


The  Meadow  of  Remembrance      53 

human  ache.  Would  the  time  come  when  that 
ache  would  cease  forever,  when  once  more  life's 
standard  of  value  would  be  changed  for  him,  and 
the  Whole  become  again  what  the  part  too  long 
had  been?  Would  he  ever  regain  his  lost  place  in 
the  great  harmony,  fulfil  himself,  do  his  small 
share  in  the  cosmic  work,  with  joyous  efficiency  — 
as  a  bird  sings,  or  a  tree  grows? 

All  this  time  there  had  been  one  meadow  which 
he  had  not  entered.  It  was  a  meadow  secluded 
with  hawthorn  hedges,  half  a  mile  or  so  from  his 
house.  It  swept  down  from  a  green  upland  to  the 
banks  of  the  trout-stream  that  loitered  its  osiered 
course  through  that  country-side.  In  all  these 
walks,  whenever  Wasteneys  approached  it,  he 
took  some  devious  way  to  avoid  it.  He  had 
vowed  that  he  would  walk  in  that  meadow  no 
more,  that  he  dared  not  walk  in  it.  For  a  flower 
was  growing  there  to  which  the  hawthorn  was 
scentless.  But  he  said  to  himself  one  day  that  it 
were  better  to  go  and  stand  in  that  meadow,  and 
smell  that  flower,  now  in  the  new  strength  of  his 
soul ;  lest  the  power  of  their  enchantments  might 
grow  with  his  avoidance  of  them.  Anything  we 
dare  not  look  at  must  in  the  end  conquer  us.  Yes  ! 
he  would  go  to  the  meadow,  and  smell  the  strange 
flower  again,  and  his  heart  would  ache,  but  it 
would  not  fail. 


54       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

So,  early  one  morning,  Wasteneys  went  up  to 
his  meadow  through  the  freshness  and  the  still- 
ness. His  heart  beat  and  he  quickened  his  steps 
as  he  neared  it.  Something  whispered  that  his 
soul  had  meant  to  come  here  all  the  time  —  that 
he  would  go  on  coming  here  forever ;  that  nature 
was  not  enough,  that  all  nature,  and  more  besides, 
was  in  that  little  blue  flower.  Little  blue  flower 
which  fills  all  the  morning  sky  with  fragrance. 
Little  blue  flower  filled  with  all  the  ache  and 
sweetness  of  human  hearts. 

An  hour  afterwards  Wasteneys  lay  face  down  in 
the  grass.  The  Great  Mother  pressed  close  to  him 
for  comfort;  she  flooded  his  sad  figure  with  sun- 
light ;  her  morning  breezes  pressed  cool  hands 
against  his  brow;  little  birds  came  near  and  peeped 
and  sang;  all  the  mighty  morning  begged  to  be 
his  friend.  But  Wasteneys  lay  on  unheeding,  face 
down  in  the  grass,  crying  like  a  child. 

That  night  found  him  back  again  in  his  London 
rooms.  In  his  desk  was  a  beautiful  locked  manu- 
script volume,  to  which  half  humorously  he  had 
given  the  name  of  "  The  Sad  Heart  of  Pagan 
Wasteneys."  It  was  a  sort  of  intermittent  diary  of 
his  possession.  About  midnight  he  slid  aside  the 
moonstone  which  masked  the  curiously  contrived 


The  Meadow  of  Remembrance      55 

lock,  and  added  this  lyric  to  the  other  sad  writing 
in  the  book : 

"  For  lack  and  love  of  you,  love, 
I  pine  the  long  days  through ; 

I  waste  the  powers 

Of  the  rich  hours, 
For  lack  and  love  of  you. 

"  For  lack  and  love  of  you,  love, 

All  life  is  grown  untrue  ; 
O,  I  squander 
And  I  wander, 

For  lack  and  love  of  you. 

"  For  lack  and  love  of  you,  love, 

I  grow  myself  untrue  ; 
I  am  drowning, 
Drowning,  drowning, 

For  lack  and  love  of  you." 

As  he  closed  the  book  and  turned  out  the  lamp, 
a  strange  thought  struck  him:  Was  this  lyric 
quite,  absolutely,  simply  true  ?  Was  this  passion 
really  all  it  had  seemed  to  him?  Did  it  really 
mean  all  it  had  seemed  to  mean?  The  thought 
filled  him  with  a  curious  wonder.  So  might  a 
prisoner  one  day  rub  his  eyes  and  say:  "Am  I 
really  in  prison?  " 

That  he  had  returned  to  town  thus  in  a  panic 
of  loneliness  must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  the 
last  three  weeks  had  been  in  vain.  Spiritual 


56       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

changes  are  seldom  completed  all  at  once.  One 
such  emotional  mood  as  that  through  which  Was- 
teneys  had  just  passed  is  not  sufficient.  Many 
such  may  be  needed,  and  meanwhile  it  may  seem 
to  the  spectator,  and  even  to  the  soul  itself,  that 
no  change  is  taking  place.  Yet  in  the  darkness 
the  change  is  surely  being  wrought.  Wasteneys 
came  back  to  town  to  seek  it  once  more  as  an 
anodyne,  but  he  was  not  the  same  man  that  had 
left  it  three  weeks  before.  Already,  it  had  lost  its 
power  to  harm  him.  Already  a  new  principle  of 
life  was  moving  in  him.  Vital  purposes  long 
asleep  were  dimly  astir.  But  of  these  he  was  to 
be  unconscious  for  a  long  time  to  come.  Life  has 
a  way  of  keeping  us  in  the  dark  as  to  its  purpose 
with  us  till  that  purpose  is  accomplished. 


CHAPTER    XI 

ADELINE  WOOD 

THERE  was  one  woman  who  was  really 
good  for  Wasteneys.  Adeline  Wood  was 
a  little  West-country  girl  who  had  felt 
herself  one  too  many  in  a  big  family  of  girls,  and 
had  managed,  with  no  little  romantic  excitement 
and  personal  courage,  to  detach  herself  and  come 
to  London.  How  much  is  romance  indebted  to 
trivial  barriers  for  its  opportunities !  Many  thou- 
sand travellers  enter  London  every  day  by  the 
great  doors  of  its  railway  termini.  They  scatter 
themselves  in  hansoms  and  hotel  omnibuses  in  one 
direction  and  another ;  and  they  transact  their 
business  without  a  thought  that  —  this  is  Fairy- 
land !  Who  has  not  known  men  to  whom  Rome 
is  but  a  market-town,  and  Antioch  a  city  of 
mulberry-trees  and  tobacco  plants?  To  Adeline 
Wood,  romance  had  always  expressed  itself, 
firstly :  as  London ;  secondly,  and  with  multiple 
suggestiveness,  as  all  that  might  happen  in  Lon- 
don. To  Adeline  Wood  London  was  Bagdad, 
whose  first  nights  were  Arabian  Nights;  and 
whose  streets  were  peopled  with  grand  viziers  in 


58       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

disguise.  Just  to  have  lodgings  in  London  — 
lodgings  and  a  London  latchkey  —  was  a  suffi- 
ciently romantic  beginning.  I  don't  pretend  to 
say  why.  The  potent  fancies  of  human  beings, 
even  little  provincial  girls,  go  deeper  than  reason. 

Adeline  Wood  was  one  of  those  eager  bachelor 
girls  who  starve  themselves  to  buy  books  they 
cannot  else  afford,  who  carry  camp  stools  to  the 
pits  of  theatres,  who  sacrifice  a  mere  lunch  to  see 
a  Bond  Street  exhibition.  Probably  her  zest  in 
these  things  was  chiefly  the  zest  in  being  free. 
The  emancipated  slave  naturally  revels  in  being 
able  to  do  anything  of  his  or  her  own  free-will. 
One  must  have  been  such  a  slave  as  Woman  to 
realize  the  excitement  of  such  rudimentary  free- 
doom.  Such  has  been  the  bondage  of  the  Eng- 
lish provincial  girl  for  hundreds  of  years,  that  to 
gain  at  last  the  freedom  to  earn  a  hundred  pounds 
a  year,  by  her  own  labor,  thus  foregoing  many  a 
comfort  and  elegance  of  her  prosperous  West- 
country  home,  but  thus  ransoming  her  own  body 
and  soul,  may  well  have  seemed  a  notable  triumph 
not  merely  for  herself,  but  for  her  sex. 

Adeline  Wood  might  have  fought  and  won  the 
battle  of  sex,  differently;  merely  in  fact  with 
the  weapon  of  a  beauty  which  was  perhaps  just  a 
little  too  intellectual.  But  the  conquests  so  far 
within  her  reach  had  not  been  to  her  mind. 


Adeline  Wood  59 

Marriage  seemed  nothing  like  so  romantic  to  her, 
as  having  two  little  rooms  of  her  own  in  London, 
and  making  her  own  living  by  the  delicate  craft 
of  book-binding. 

She  was  one  of  a  little  band  of  men  and  women 
inspired  by  the  influence  of  a  certain  master- 
craftsman,  who  brought  something  like  a  reli- 
gious enthusiasm  to  his  craft,  and  taught  his 
followers  that  the  humblest  artificers  in  the  tem- 
ple of  art  participated  in  their  degree  in  the 
sacerdotal  office  of  beauty.  Little  Adeline  Wood 
went  about  her  work  like  an  acolyte  carrying 
sacred  vessels.  She  was  very  happy,  —  a  little 
perhaps  as  nuns  are  happy;  a  happiness  which, 
like  all  true  happiness,  included  a  certain  auster- 
ity, and  discipline,  and  watchful  aspiration,  of 
life.  It  was  wonderful  what  pleasure  and  excite- 
ment she  extracted  from  every  little  incident  and 
circumstance  of  her  existence.  So  much  of  our 
pleasure,  far  more  than  we  know,  comes  of  an 
unspoilt  appetite.  Even  her  simple  little  meals 
had  an  air  about  them.  Selection  is,  as  we 
know,  a  most  important  formative  principle  of 
every  art.  It  is  especially  important  to  the  art 
of  living.  Thus,  poverty,  with  its  enforced  care- 
ful choice  among  pleasures,  is  a  fine  sharpener  of 
the  taste.  There  is  no  such  connoisseur  as  your 
poor  connoisseur.  Poverty  keeps  the  eye  eagerly 


60       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

clean  for  quality;  for,  while  quality  in  quantity 
is  beyond  its  reach,  it  may  still  hope  to  possess 
itself  of  an  occasional  example  of  "quality." 
One  really  fine  thing !  In  that  you  have  the 
essential  excellence  and  wonder.  Long  galleries 
of  collections  do  not  go  deeper  than  that.  If 
you  possess  one  really  fine  piece  of  old  silver, 
the  richest  collection  of  old  silver  in  the  world 
does  not  really  surpass  you.  They  have  more 
of  the  same  thing  —  but  you  have  the  essential 
unit  of  quality.  Multiplication  is  not  distinc- 
tion. Indeed,  it  tends  precisely  in  the  other 
direction. 

This  merely  in  illustration  of  Adeline  Wood, 
from  whom  Wasteneys  found  a  letter  awaiting 
him  on  his  return  to  town.  Of  course,  hers  was 
not  the  only  letter  awaiting  him.  There  was  one 
from  Myrtle  Rome  too,  beginning  "My  King!" 
as  Myrtle's  really  beautiful  and  very  romantic 
letters  always  began.  Of  Myrtle  more  later  on. 
Wasteneys  laid  aside  that  picturesque  spray  of 
womanhood,  to  read  Adeline's  austere  little 
note  of  invitation  to  tea  —  tea  and  a  new  book- 
binding. 

The  thought  of  Adeline  was  like  the  cool  even- 
ing star  rising  over  the  hot  earth.  Why  had  he 
never  made  love  to  Adeline?  You  could  not  see 
her  handwriting  without  understanding  what  a 


Adeline  Wood  61 

wonderful  wife  she  would  make.  Well,  perhaps, 
it  was  that  a  man  would  need  to  be  a  very  good 
husband  to  be  worthy  of  Adeline;  and  then 
Wasteneys  had  never  thought  of  marrying  any 
woman. 

Wasteneys  had  met  Adeline  at  his  cousin's, 
Lady  Lucy  Silchester's.  Lady  Lucy  was  one  of 
those  noble  ladies,  who  flirt  with  Grub  Street  and 
send  cards  of  invitation  to  popular  authors  they 
do  not  know.  That  is,  she  was  "literary."  In 
her  kind  shallow  heart  she  believed  herself  a 
poet.  It  was  really  a  pity  that  she  should  have 
contracted  this  illusion,  for  it  made  intercourse 
with  her  a  little  precarious.  Wasteneys  had  suf- 
fered much  from  her  sad  little  manuscripts,  and 
it  was  his  fear  of  them  that  made  him  a  rarer 
visitor  than  he  would  otherwise  have  been ;  for 
he  liked  his  cousin,  with  her  pretty  head  and 
bright  popular  ways. 

In  support  of  her  literary  character,  Lady  Lucy 
filled  her  rooms  with  an  indiscriminate  collection 
of  men  and  women  in  one  way  or  another  living 
the  sad  life  of  the  pen.  With  a  genuine  appre- 
ciation of  good  literature,  she  would  yet  surprise 
you  at  times  with  an  equally  sincere  enthusiasm 
for  bad.  Her  taste  was  what  is  known  as  "un- 
certain "  —  and  of  this  uncertainty  she  was  herself, 
one  could  sometimes  note,  nervously  conscious. 


62       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

Therefore,  she  often  wrote  to  Wasteneys  for  his 
"opinion"  on  this  or  that  new  book,  and  he 
smiled  sometimes  to  see  how  daintily  she  would 
reproduce  it  at  her  next  afternoon. 

Her  acquaintance  with  Adeline  Wood  had 
come  of  Lady  Lucy's  following  the  fashion  in 
book-binding,  and  she  had  taken  a  genuine  fancy 
for  the  girl,  with  her  gentle,  distinguished,  and 
somewhat  haughty  air. 

Among  Wasteneys'  letters  had  been  a  heart- 
breaking appeal  from  Lady  Lucy  to  help  her  with 
a  tea  on  the  morrow,  and,  as  Wasteneys  had 
neglected  her  somewhat  callously  for  a  long  time, 
he  decided  to  give  ear  to  it.  Besides,  it  was  not 
unlikely  that  Adeline  might  be  there. 

His  first  thought  on  entering  Lady  Lucy's 
drawing-room  next  afternoon  was  that  Adeline 
was  there.  She  sent  him  one  of  her  long  sweet 
smiles  across  a  sea  of  talkers  through  which  it 
was  plainly  impossible  to  swim  on  the  instant  to 
her  side.  Indeed,  Lady  Lucy  made  that  clear  at 
once. 

"Don't  think  you  are  going  off  to  sit  in  a 
corner  with  Adeline,"  she  said,  knowing  the 
friendship  between  the  two.  "  You  have  to  make 
up  your  arrears  with  me  first." 

A  great  book  by  a  profound  and  sorrowful  mas- 
ter had  just  been  published.  Lady  Lucy  asked 


Adeline  Wood  63 

Wasteneys'  opinion  of  it,  as  though  it  had  been 
a  new  brand  of  cigarettes. 

"  Do  you  think  it  right  to  speak  of  it  here  ?  " 
he  said  —  and  he  looked  round. 

"Of  course,  I  know  it  is  very  deep,"  said  Lady 
Lucy,  not  quite  understanding. 

Then  her  duties  as  hostess  called  her  away,  and 
Wasteneys  found  himself  listening  in  a  dream  to  an 
American  lady  journalist  who  was  asking  him  his 
opinion  of  "pessimism."  Pessimism!  It  was  like 
asking  what  one  thought  of  Mr.  Stephenson's  won- 
derful invention  of  the  steam-engine.  However! 

"I  should  define  pessimism,"  said  Wasteneys 
gravely,  "as  making  the  best  of  it." 

"And  saying  the  worst,"  added  a  neighboring 
talker,  one  of  those  good-natured  persons  who 
love  to  cast  light  upon  other  people's  jokes. 

"I  think  that  very  clever,"  said  the  American 
lady,  not  in  the  least  comprehending.  "  Do  you 
mind  writing  it  down  for  me?  "  and  she  produced 
a  card  case  and  asked  Wasteneys  to  write  it  upon 
one  of  her  cards. 

"  It  is  always  such  a  pleasure  to  meet  men  of 
genius,"  she  added. 

At  last  by  a  daring  and  somewhat  shameless 
piece  of  social  strategy  Wasteneys  shot  across  to 
Adeline. 

"At  last!"  he  said. 


64       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"Well?"  said  Adeline,  meaning,  "what  news 
since  we  last  met? "  and  then  without  waiting  for 
him  to  reply  she  said,  looking  critically  into  his 
face. 

"  You  look  better ! " 

"Better?" 

"  Then  gooder  —  so  to  speak. " 

"  I  've  been  watching  flowers  grow  and  listen- 
ing to  birds  singing." 

"I'm  glad." 

"Why?" 

"Because  it 's  good  for  you.  I  wish  you  would 
do  it  oftener. " 

"Won't  looking  at  book-bindings  do  as  well? " 

"Are  you  coming  to-morrow?  " 

"Of  course." 

"  What  were  you  saying  to  that  lady  over  there  ?  " 

"Why  do  you  ask?" 

"Because  I  noticed  that  curious  smile  which 
comes  over  your  face  when  you  have  said  some- 
thing absurd." 

"  Well,  she  asked  me  —  think  of  it  —  what  I 
thought  of  pessimism." 

"  And  what  did  you  say  ?  " 

"  I  said  —  I  should  define  pessimism  as  —  mak- 
ing the  best  of  it." 

"Poor  soul!  Had  she  a  notion  of  what  you 
meant  ? " 


Adeline  Wood  65 

"  She  asked  me  to  copy  it  down  for  her. " 

"It  was  true  though,"  said  Adeline  a  little 
sadly  —  then  turning  to  Wasteneys,  "Why  aren't 
you  a  pessimist? " 

"I  'm  going  to  be." 

"You  are  really  going  to  make  the  best  of  it." 

"What  nonsense  are  you  two  talking?"  sud- 
denly broke  in  Lady  Lucy,  who  was  not  so  happy 
with  her  other  guests  as  she  tried  to  appear. 

"Adeline  has  just  made  a  bad  pun,  for  my 
spiritual  good,"  laughed  Wasteneys. 

"Well,  I  hope  it  will  not  be  made  in  vain," 
said  Lady  Lucy.  "Have  you  seen  Adeline's 
latest  binding?  " 

"No,  I  am  to  see  it  to-morrow." 

And  with  the  buzz  of  such  small  talk  this  chap- 
ter may  as  well  end. 


CHAPTER   XII 
"THE  LOVE-LETTERS  OF  THE  KING" 

ADELINE  had  two  pretty  old-fashioned 
rooms  high  up,  overlooking  one  of  the  old 
London  squares,  and  it  was  one  of  the 
joys  of  her  life  that  she  did  her  work  under  an 
Adams  ceiling.  Her  rooms,  simple  as  they  were, 
gave  one  that  pleasure  which  rooms  expressive  of 
a  refined  occupant  with  individual  taste  always 
give.  Everything  in  them  meant  a  personal 
preference,  and  the  whole  formed  a  symbol  of  the 
inner  life  of  a  girl,  who  in  everything  had  dared 
to  choose  for  herself.  It  was  autobiography  in 
the  form  of  carefully  selected  furniture,  pictures 
and  books.  Nothing  was  irrelevant.  Adeline, 
too,  had  a  way  of  discovering  pictures  no  one 
else  had,  and  framing  them  for  a  few  shillings 
as  no  one  else  framed  theirs.  Just  as  clever 
women  can  make  a  hat  for  half-a-crown  that  sets 
all  their  rich  friends  asking  who  is  their  distin- 
guished milliner,  so  Adeline  contrived  to  give  to 
her  little  rooms  an  air  which  the  rooms  of  the 
rich,  by  the  comparative  indifference  to  single 
details  which  comes  of  abundance,  seldom  attain. 


"The  Love-Letters  of  the  King''     67 

Her  little  tea-table  seemed  like  no  other  tea- 
table.  Old  silver  and  old  china  far  more  costly 
might  fail  to  give  so  exquisite  an  impression; 
and  Adeline's  bread  and  butter!  Well  —  no 
doubt  it  was  because  she  always  cut  it  herself. 
There  is  nothing  which  so  rewards  a  personal 
exertion  as  bread  and  butter.  The  way  in  which 
one  cuts  bread  and  butter  is  an  unfailing  test  of 
one's  delicacy.  Nothing  is  so  eloquent  of  the 
division  between  the  laboring  and  the  cultured 
classes  as  the  relative  thickness  of  their  bread 
and  butter.  Adeline's  bread  and  butter  seemed 
rather  to  belong  to  the  world  of  spirit  than  to 
the  world  of  matter.  It  had  the  immateriality  of 
certain  flowers.  Her  tea  also  was  the  very  soul 
of  tea. 

When  Wasteneys  came  on  the  morrow,  the 
little  drawing-room  seemed  unusually  fresh  and 
sunny. 

"It  is  so  good  for  me  to  be  here,  Adeline,"  he 
said. 

Adeline  smiled,  as,  having  warmed  the  tea-pot 
for  a  due  space,  she  poured  the  hot  water  upon 
the  fragrant  leaves. 

In  the  room  were  two  great  presses,  pictur- 
esque engines  of  her  art,  recalling  the  early 
printers,  in  which  the  bindings  underwent  cer- 
tain mysterious  processes ;  and  in  an  alcove  were 


68       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

shelves  full  of  shining  tools.  A  roll  of  colored 
skins,  some  day  to  become  bindings,  lay  upon  the 
floor. 

"It  is  truly  a  sacerdotal  art,"  said  Wasteneys, 
as  he  admiringly  examined  Adeline's  new  bind- 
ing. "There  is  no  satisfaction  equal  to  having 
made  something  beautiful  literally  with  one's 
hands.  The  sensitive  absorption  of  the  work 
alone  is  a  great  reward.  You  must  be  happy, 
Adeline." 

"But  mine  is  such  a  tiny  art,"  said  Adeline; 
"what  is  it  compared  with  an  art  like  yours?  If 
to  bind  a  book  is  such  a  joy,  what  must  it  be  to 
write  one!  " 

"  Ah !  there  you  mistake  —  an  art  is  a  joy  to 
practise  the  more  it  is  a  physical  craft.  Lit- 
erature is  only  a  handicraft  in  that  it  employs 
handwriting,  which  many  literary  men  abhor. 
Personally,  I  love  handwriting,  and  I  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  think  till  my  pen  is  in  my  hand.  For 
the  rest,  literature  —  so  far  as  so  humble  a  writer 
can  speak  of  it  —  is  an  art  practised  either  in  a 
state  of  exhausting  delirium,  or  still  more  ex- 
hausting ennui.  And  even  the  mere  material,  in 
the  case  of  personal  writers,  is  costly  to  the  point 
of  tragedy.  Everything  that  is  really  written  is 
written  in  human  blood  —  either  that  of  the  writer, 
or  that  of  his  victim." 


"  The  Love-Letters  of  the  King  "      69 

"  In  whose  blood  have  you  been  writing  lately  ?  " 
asked  Adeline,  quizzically. 

"To  tell  the  truth,"  answered  Wasteneys, 
laughing,  "just  before  I  came  to  you,  I  found 
in  my  desk  a  half-forgotten  manuscript  written 
in  my  own !  It  is  only  a  fragment,  but  it  rather 
interested  me  to  read  it  again,  and,  knowing  your 
indulgence,  I  have  brought  it  with  me.  Shall  I 
read  it  now,  or  shall  we  keep  it  for  the  creme  de 
menthe  ?  " 

Tea  with  Adeline,  as  they  both  knew,  always 
prolonged  itself  into  dinner  at  a  little  Italian 
restaurant,  where  distinguished  poverty  dined 
delicately  on  a  few  shillings — and  what  survived 
in  Wasteneys  of  the  artist  was  never  so  happy  as 
when,  with  the  coming  of  coffee  and  cigarettes, 
Adeline  allowed  him  to  read  her  his  latest  manu- 
script. Men  write  their  books  to  many  women 
by  accidental  association,  but  there  is  usually  one 
woman  for  whom  they  are  written.  The  woman 
to  whom  you  write  has  probably  no  interest  in 
literature  at  all,  and  she  probably  considers  you 
an  eccentric  creature  who  will  write  bewildering 
books  about  her,  which  even  she,  the  subject  of 
them,  cannot  understand.  The  artist  cares  noth- 
ing for  what  she  thinks.  He  would  as  little 
think  of  asking  his  three-year-old  child  her  opin- 
ion on  his  last  cradle-song.  The  woman  who 


yo       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

inspires  is  of  n0  importance;  it  is  the  woman 
who  understands  that  is  the  real  muse. 

Now,  as  I  have  implied,  there  was  no  sentiment 
between  Adeline  Wood  and  Pagan  Wasteneys, 
yet,  all  the  same,  it  was  true  that  everything  he 
wrote  was  written  for  her  —  for  the  simple  rea- 
son, maybe,  that  no  line  of  it  was  written  to  her. 
To  win  her  praise  was  his  idea  of  success.  The 
praise  of  the  critical  journals  was  nothing  like 
so  important  to  him,  though,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  was  more  within  his  reach ;  for  the  laurels  of 
Adeline  Wood  were  not  easy  to  win. 

"  Let  us  keep  it  for  the  creme  de  menthe" 
said  Adeline,  "but  you  can  tell  me  the  title 
now." 

'"The  Love-Letters  of  the  King,'"  said 
Wasteneys. 

"A  picturesque  title,"  said  Adeline,  "a  little 
too  picturesque." 

"A  title  is  in  the  nature  of  a  poster,"  said 
Wasteneys,  "and  must  be  flamboyant  to  catch 
the  eye  of  the  mind." 

"Quite  true!"  said  Adeline,  "and  I  confess 
your  poster  is  so  effective  that  I  think  you  had 
better  read  it  to  me  now." 

"  No  !  "  said  Wasteneys,  firmly,  "  let  us  wait 
till  the  creme  de  menthe.  That  is  the  truly  criti- 
cal hour  of  the  day,  and  I  desire  your  most 


"The  Love-Letters  of  the  King"     71 

searching  criticism,  Adeline.  You  might  praise 
me  weakly,  if  I  read  to  you  now." 

"Just  tell  me,  then,  what  sort  of  a  thing  it  is." 

"It  is  a  fairy  tale." 

"  A  fairy  tale !  I  see,  you  mean  —  autobiog- 
raphy?" 

"All  real  writing  is  autobiography,"  said 
Wasteneys  modestly. 

"Well,  don't  you  think  it  is  time  to  begin 
reading  ? "  asked  Adeline,  an  hour  or  two  after- 
wards in  a  secluded  corner  of  prandial  candle- 
light. 

"  All  right !  "  said  Wasteneys,  diving  abruptly 
into  the  pearl-fishery  of  his  manuscript. 

"It  was  May  in  the  King's  garden,  and  the 
King  sat  there  towards  the  close  of  the  afternoon, 
with  his  admiring  court  about  him.  He  was  still 
young  to  look  on,  but  there  was  that  sadness  in 
his  dark  handsome  face  which  tells  that  the  heart 
is  old  before  its  time.  No  one  knew  how  sorrow 
had  come  to  the  King,  but  to  eyes  accustomed  to 
read  the  human  soul  there  was  sorrow  in  all  his 
ways,  even  in  his  gayest  moments.  Such  might 
guess  that  his  half-cynical  preoccupation  with 
light  pleasures,  his  absorption  in  the  toys  of  art 
and  emotion,  served  only  to  veil  an  inner  life  of 


72       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

a  very  different  seriousness.  His  kingdom  was 
so  small  that  there  was  nothing  for  a  king  to 
do,  except  to  superintend  his  architects  and  the 
various  artists  who  daily  wrought  at  his  palace,  in 
obedience  to  his  learned  and  innovating  fancy. 
Nothing  more  serious  than  that  —  but  idler  hours 
the  King  spent  in  such  delicate  literary  trifling  as 
was  occupying  him  and  his  court  this  afternoon. 

"It  had  been  one  of  his  fancies  to  revive  the 
fantastic  toys  of  the  cours  d'amour,  and  he  was 
looked  upon  by  all  his  court  as  a  master  of  the 
arts  of  literary  love.  It  was  one  of  his  fancies 
to  revive  the  love-letter  as  a  literary  form,  to  use 
it  merely  as  a  mould,  as  the  poet  uses  the  ballade 
or  the  sestina,  and  the  experiments  he  had  made 
in  that  subtle  form  had  won  him  high  apprecia- 
tion among  les  prtcieuses  of  his  court.  '  The 
King's  Love-Letters  '  went  from  hand  to  hand  in 
beautifully  illuminated  copies,  and  the  boudoir 
of  every  lady  of  quality  was  duly  provided  with 
the  latest  perfumed  edition.  For  gallants  and 
all  casuists  of  the  gentle  art  they  were  regarded 
as  an  indispensable  manual.  Of  course,  no  one 
dreamed  of  attaching  to  them  any  personal  human 
application.  It  was  understood  that  they  were 
exercises  by  a  master  in  the  difficult  art  of  prose, 
nothing  more;  for  it  was  well  known  that,  though 
the  King  might  occasionally  dally  with  this  or 


"The  Love-Letters  of  the  King"      73 

that  lady  of  his  court,  out  of  courtesy  or  ennui, 
he  was  seriously  attached  to  no  one  —  no  one,  at 
all  events,  that  any  one  knew  of. 

"To-day  the  King  had  written  a  wonderful 
new  love-letter,  and  as  he  languidly  read  it  to 
his  court  —  a  court  which  in  secret  he  despised 

—  scribes  were   busy  in   the  background   taking 
down  each  delicately-chosen  and  carefully-placed 
word  that  fell  from  his  lips. 

"When  he  had  finished  reading,  the  court 
broke  out  into  the  customary  ecstasies  of  appre- 
ciation. Enthusiastic  ladies  pressed  close  to 
the  King  and  marvelled  at  his  knowledge  of 
the  deep  heart  of  love,  petit-maitres  picked  out 
this  or  that  sentence,  for  its  masterly  this  or  its 
miraculous  that.  No  writer  of  the  day  equalled 
the  King,  said  one,  in  the  superb  orchestration 
of  prose.  This  was  undeniable,  for  no  one,  in- 
cluding king  and  critic,  knew  exactly  what  such 
praise  meant.  But  it  sounded  well — the  'orches- 
tration of  prose !  '  —  and  there  was  a  murmur  of 
applause. 

"An  imitative  critic  thereon  ventured  to  praise 
a  passage  where  what  he  might  call  the  oboe  of 
prose  for  a  moment  dominated  the  grander  music 

—  a  very  black-bird  of  a  sentence! 

"And  there  were  many  more  comments  of  a 
like  nature. 


74       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"The  King  listened  and  smiled.  All  the  time 
he  was  watching  the  lonely,  somewhat  bewil- 
dered, face  of  a  beautiful  young  girl.  He  sur- 
mised that  she  was  a  stranger  at  the  court,  come 
up  from  some  simple  country  castle  to  visit 
friends  in  the  great  world.  Her  face  had  caught 
his  eye  as  he  began  reading,  and  he  had  watched 
it  all  the  while.  It  had  remained  throughout 
like  the  face  of  one  who  listens  to  a  song  in  a 
language  he  does  not  understand.  Its  only 
change  was  a  deepening  perplexity  —  which 
seemed  meekly  to  ask  the  meaning  of  it  all. 
This  troubled  young  face  was  the  only  critic  the 
King  heeded.  For  his  sad  eyes  saw  the  light 
of  love  upon  it,  the  light  that  was  on  no  other 
face.  Presently,  as  his  flatterers  spent  them- 
selves and  dispersed  in  groups  about  the  garden, 
he  took  an  opportunity  to  speak  to  his  silent 
little  critic. 

"'All  these  people  have  been  so  kind,'  he 
said,  laughing,  '  but  you  have  said  nothing  kind 
to  me.' 

"The  girl's  eyes  filled  with  tears.  She  had 
never  before  spoken  to  a  king,  and  she  was  very 
timid.  But,  dropping  a  quaint  little  country 
curtsey,  she  summoned  courage  to  say: 

"  '  It  was  very  beautiful  —  your  Majesty  —  but 
it  was  not  a  love-letter. ' 


"The  Love-Letters  of  the  King"      75 

"  Then,  with  the  na'fve  daring  of  the  innocent, 
she  slipped  her  hand  into  her  bosom  and  drew 
out  a  warm  little  writing,  which  she  offered  to 
the  King  to  read. 

"The  King  read  it  gravely,  and,  as  he  read  it, 
it  was  his  eyes  that  filled  with  tears.  When  he 
had  finished  reading,  he  folded  it  reverently,  and, 
giving  it  back  to  her,  said :  '  No,  mine  was  not  a 
love-letter. ' 

"Then,  taking  off  his  hat  and  bending  slightly, 
he  kissed  her  hand  and  turned  away  with  a  sigh." 

"You  have  written  more  than  that,"  said  Ade- 
line, as  Wasteneys  suddenly  ceased  reading; 
"won't  you  go  on?" 

"Hadn't  I  better  keep  some  for  next  time? 
Besides,  if  you  don't  mind,  I  would  rather  not 
read  any  more  to-night.  Let  us  dine  together 
again  to-morrow,  and  I  will  read  you  the  rest  — 
that  is,  so  far  as  it  goes;  for  it  is  a  long  way 
from  being  finished " 

His  face  had  grown  drawn  and  tired,  and  his 
eyes  seemed  suddenly  filled  with  memories. 

"Of  course,"  said  Adeline,  divining  more 
than  he  thought.  "But  tell  me  this  before 
you  go.  The  King  understood  because  he 
had  really  known  love  once.  Is  that  the 
meaning  ?  " 


j6       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"  Yes ! "  said  .Wasteneys,  softly  and  half  to 
himself,  "the  King  had  known  love." 

"I  thought  so,"  said  Adeline,  with  a  sigh. 

As  Wasteneys  spoke  he  saw  a  vision  of  a 
woman  —  gathering  mushrooms  in  the  dawn! 


CHAPTER   XIII 

"THE  LOVE-LETTERS  OF  THE  KING"  (continued) 


"  P    •   ^HE  King  understood,"  said  Adeline,  as 

dinner  neared  its  close  the  next  even- 

-*-      ing,  and  taking  up  their  talk  where  they 

had  left  it,  "because  he  had  really  known  love. 

Now  go  on." 

"Yes!  the  King  understood,"  proceeded  Was- 
teneys,  "  because  in  a  golden  box  set  with  moon- 
stones he  had  five  real  love-letters.  They  were 
very  short,  and  he  had  come  by  them  in  this  way. 

"  One  morning  rising  early,  as  was  his  custom, 
he  had  walked  alone  in  a  dewy  upland  some  little 
way  from  his  palace,  and  he  had  suddenly  come 
upon  a  beautiful  woman  gathering  mushrooms. 
For  a  few  moments  she  did  not  see  the  King, 
and  he  had  time  to  see  how  beautiful  she  was, 
as  she  bent  down  here  and  there,  softly  tearing 
the  milk-white  things  out  of  the  green  grass. 
She  was  all  in  white,  save  her  hair,  which  was 
black  as  --  " 

"Oh,  she  had  black  hair!"  interrupted  Adeline 
involuntarily. 


78       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"  Yes  !  very  black  hair !  "  Wasteneys  continued, 
"and  her  body  was  very  tall  and  straight,  and  her 
skin  white  as  the  pith  of  a  peeled  willow  wand. 

"Presently  she  saw  the  King  and  stopped 
gathering  the  mushrooms,  looking  long  at  him 
with  great  fearless  eyes,  like  a  child's.  The 
King  had  never  seen  such  eyes,  and  she  had 
never  seen  such  eyes  as  the  King's;  so  they  stood 
long  looking  strangely  at  each  other,  alone  on 
the  uplands  in  the  silence  of  the  morning.  And 
such  is  the  mystery  of  human  hearts,  that  they 
knew  from  that  look  that  they  would  love  each 
other,  and  no  other,  as  long  as  they  lived.  Then 
the  King  laughed,  and  the  woman  laughed  too, 
as  if  they  had  known  each  other  for  years. 

" '  Do  you  know  that  you  are  stealing  the  King's 
mushrooms? '  asked  the  King. 

"'Are  you  the  King?' 

" '  Yes. ' 

" '  The  King  of  all  these  mushrooms? ' 

"  '  Yes  —  every  one  !  ' 

"  *  What  then  will  happen  to  me  ? ' 

" '  I  will  spare  your  life  on  one  condition  — 
that  we  sit  under  yonder  tree  and  eat  them 
together. ' 

"  So  the  King  and  the  woman  laughed  like 
children,  while  they  silently  gave  their  hearts  to 
each  other. 


"  The  Love-Letters  of  the  King  "      79 

"  Suddenly  the  woman  looked  at  him  with  her 
child's  eyes,  and  said: 

" '  Are  you  a  real  king  ? ' 

" '  I  think  so. ' 

" '  Do  you  lead  great  armies,  and  govern  a 
mighty  land? ' 

" '  I  have  such  a  little  land  to  govern. ' 

" '  But  you  should  make  it  great. ' 

" '  Stay  with  me  —  and  I  will  be  a  real  king. ' 

"'Alas!  I  cannot.  I  have  promised  to  make 
another  man  a  king. 

"'  But  this  will  I  do,'  said  the  woman  after  a 
silence.  '  I  will  meet  you  once  a  year  in  this 
meadow  and  ask  you  that  question :  Are  you  a 
real  king  ?  and  once  a  year  I  will  write  you  a 
letter  to  help  you  to  be  a  real  king.' 

"Now,  when  the  woman  had  gone,  the  King 
fell  sad  on  account  of  those  eyes,  and  spent  his 
time  idly  with  minstrels  and  such  folk,  and  be- 
came from  year  to  year  less  and  less  a  king.  But 
each  year  as  that  day  came  round,  the  King  went 
up  to  the  meadow  at  early  dawn,  and  there  was 
the  woman  awaiting  him  —  as  each  year  there 
came  a  plumed  and  perfumed  messenger  bring- 
ing a  letter  to  the  King. 

"  This  was  the  first  letter :  '/  love  you. ' 

"And  the  King  said:  'This  will  make  me 
great. ' 


8o       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"This  was  the  second  letter:  1 1  love  you.' 
"  And  the  King  said  :  '  I  will  be  great. ' 
"This  was  the  third  letter:  ' 7 love  you.' 
"  And  the  King  said :  '  I  can  be  great. ' 
"This  was  the  fourth  letter:  ' '/  love  you.' 
"  And  the  King  said :  *  I  must  be  great. ' 
"But  on  the  fifth  year  there  came  this  letter: 
' 1 must  love  you  no  more.     I  can  only  love  a  king. ' 
"When  the  King  read  the  fifth  letter  he  went 
more  wildly  with  his  minstrels  and  flatterers  than 
ever,   living  weakly  in    pleasures  that  gave  him 
no  joy,  and  in  the  wine  and  the  harp-playing  he 
strove  to  forget;   but  always  the  woman's  voice 
went  on  asking   in    his  soul :   '  Are   you  a  real 
king  ? ' 

"  All  day  long  he  heard  his  flatterers  call  him 
'  King,'  and  '  King,'  and  '  King,'  and  sometimes 
when  the  wine  was  in  him  their  words  would 
seem  true,  and  he  would  smile  foolishly  to  him- 
self and  say:  '  I  am  a  king!  —  what  is  one  woman 
out  of  all  the  world? ' 

"  And  the  harps  would  answer :  '  Thou  art  a 
king!'  and  the  bugles  and  the  banners  would 
answer:  '  Thou  art  a  king! '  But  sometimes  the 
King  would  snatch  himself  away  from  them  all 
in  bitter  sadness,  crying  aloud  in  his  soul :  '  I 
am  not  a  king. '  " 


"  The  Love-Letters  of  the  King  "      8 1 

Wasteneys  had  come  to  the  end  of  his  manu- 
script, and  there  was  a  long  silence.  Adeline 
just  placed  her  hand  gently  on  his  for  applause; 
and  presently  in  her  soft  pure  voice  she  said : 

"  But,  of  course,  he  is  a  real  king  in  the  end. 
He  must  be  a  real  king  .  .  .  mustn't  he?"  she 
asked  wistfully,  as  Wasteneys  kept  silence. 

"Oh,  of  course,"  said  Wasteneys. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

MERIEL 

WHEN   Wasteneys   returned  home  that 
night,  he  went  to  a  large  old  cabinet 
of  beautiful  Renaissance  workmanship 
that   stood    in   his   room,    and   pressed   a   secret 
spring.      A  panel  slid  back  and  revealed  a  little 
shrine  of  ebony ;  but,  instead  of  a  crucifix,  there 
hung   there   the   miniature   of    a   beautiful   girl. 
Two  gold  candlesticks  stood  in  front  of  it,  and  a 
china  jar  filled  with  white  roses.     Wasteneys  lit 
the  candles  and  gazed  on  the  face. 

The  face,  I  have  said,  was  beautiful,  but  the 
more  one  looked  at  it  the  less  one  regarded  its 
beauty,  and  the  more  one  became  occupied  with 
something  indefinably  strange  in  its  expression. 
It  was  impossible  to  say  exactly  what  it  was;  but 
perhaps  it  consisted  in  an  unusual  combination  of 
unfathomable  calm  and  elemental  wildness.  Its 
calm  was  that  massive  calm  which  seems  to  give 
an  expression  of  moral  grandeur  to  certain  of  the 
nobler  animals,  and  its  wildness  was  the  wild- 
ness  of  woodland  things  that  live  free  lives  under 
moon  and  stars.  It  was  not  a  human  face,  but 


Meriel  83 

was  rather  a  face  one  might  imagine  for  some 
serious  dryad  or  nymph  of  the  forest  pools;  some 
being  midway  between  gods  and  men.  The 
fables  which  have  invented  such  beings  are  far 
from  being  wholly  fictions.  They  symbolize  cer- 
tain half-human  types  of  men  and  women,  who, 
in  the  outward  seeming  of  humanity,  are  really 
creatures  of  another  element,  and  are  essentially 
as  remote  from  humanity  as,  say,  a  wild  bird  on 
the  one  hand,  and  a  star  on  the  other.  Half 
human,  half  immortal;  man  loves  them  at  ter- 
rible peril.  For  a  time  the  humanity  in  them 
prevails,  and  they  bring  the  mortal  who  has 
dared  to  love  them  a  happiness  beyond  the  gift 
of  mortal  women;  but  sooner  or  later  their  own 
element  will  reclaim  them.  The  swan-maiden 
will  pine  for  her  wings,  and  the  mer-maiden 
will  hear  the  voices  of  the  deep  sea-caves.  They 
are  not  cruel,  they  are  not  kind.  They  are  only 
different  from  us. 

Wasteneys,  indeed,  was  as  yet  far  from  clearly 
understanding  the  meaning  of  the  face  he  wor- 
shipped. But  understanding  is  no  part  of  wor- 
ship—  is  it  not  rather  the  end  of  worship? 

He  stood  long  in  adoration  of  the  face. 

"  O,  Meriel !  Meriel ! "  he  cried  at  last.  "  How 
I  love  you  !  " 

Then  from  a  little  drawer  beneath  the  picture 


84       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

he  took  a  small  packet  of  letters  and  read  them 
slowly,  with  many  pauses;  for  sometimes  his  eyes 
were  too  full  of  tears,  and  sometimes  the  tears 
rained  down  his  cheeks,  and  with  bent  head  he 
sobbed  before  the  image  of  the  woman  he  loved. 

In  a  luxury  of  agony  he  lived  over  again  mo- 
ment by  moment  the  few  brief  hours  that,  speak- 
ing merely  in  terms  of  time,  made  the  whole 
history  of  his  love. 

The  fairy-tale  he  had  read  to  Adeline,  though 
in  some  respects  symbolic  only  of  the  experiences 
of  his  spirit,  was  yet  in  one  respect  so  externally 
faithful  to  his  own  story  that  there  is  hardly  need 
to  tell  again  how  he  had  seen  Meriel  for  the  first 
time. 

It  had,  indeed,  come  about  early  one  September 
morning  in  that  meadow  near  Wasteneys,  much  as 
it  had  happened  with  the  King.  Since  his  boy- 
hood Wasteneys  had  always  included  that  meadow 
in  his  early  morning  walks,  and  till  that  Septem- 
ber morning  he  had  always  had  the  meadow  to 
himself. 

But  that  morning  he  was  half  startled  to  find  a 
young  and  beautiful  girl  there  before  him.  She 
carried  in  her  hand  a  little  basket,  which  she  was 
filling  with  the  new-born  mushrooms,  plentifully 
dotted  about  the  grass  —  the  dewiest  white  in  the 
world.  She  gathered  them  eagerly,  like  a  child, 


Meriel  85 

and  Wasteneys  watched  her  a  few  moments 
unobserved.  She  seemed  the  very  incarnation 
of  morning  freshness,  and  all  the  terrible  mag- 
netism of  young  life  when  in  April  it  comes  up 
laughing  from  the  earth  in  torrents  of  sunlit  blos- 
som. There  was  the  bloom  upon  her  of  some 
superb  butterfly  that  has  just  awakened  from  its 
strange  sleep,  and  stands  waving  its  sumptuous 
wings.  Wasteneys  watched  her  in  silent  wonder, 
and  to  his  eyes  she  seemed  supernaturally  fair. 

Suddenly  she  seemed  to  be  conscious  that  she 
was  not  alone,  and,  looking  up,  she  saw  Wasteneys. 
For  a  moment  or  two  neither  spoke.  Wasteneys' 
breath  seemed  to  fail  him,  and  it  was  with  an 
almost  audible  gasp  of  delight  that  he  first  looked 
into  Mend's  great  eyes.  An  expression  as  of 
some  beautiful  frightened  animal  flashed  through 
them  as  she  looked  at  Wasteneys,  then  a  reassur- 
ance, and  then  she  looked  at  him  with  the  calm 
gaze  of  a  child.  The  silence  was  only  for  a  brief 
moment,  and  yet  it  seemed  to  both  of  them  that  it 
had  endured  for  endless  time.  The  look  was  rather 
like  a  long  joyful  recognition  than  an  introduction. 
Then  both  smiled,  and  Wasteneys  spoke. 

"  Good  morning,"  he  said ;  and  Meriel  said 
"  Good  morning." 

To  have  met  in  such  solitude  and  silence  seemed 
to  make  companionship  inevitable.  The  world  is 


86       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

so  thinly  inhabited  at  seven  in  the  morning  that 
the  few  who*  move  about  it,  should  their  paths  cross, 
cannot  ignore  each  other  without  affectation.  In 
fact,  the  choice  of  such  an  hour  to  walk  abroad  in 
makes  a  freemasonry.  It  implies  that  this  dawn- 
wanderer  is,  at  all  events,  nearer  to  us  than  the  rest 
of  the  world  by  the  operation  of  one  process  of 
selection. 

"  I  am  glad  you  like  my  mushrooms,"  said 
Wasteneys,  presently. 

"  Your  mushrooms?  " 

"  Yes." 

"You  are  lord  of  the  manor  —  is  that  it?" 

"  Yes." 

"And  that  is  your  thrush,  eh?" 

"Yes." 

"  Then  really  I  have  no  right  to  hear  it  sing  — 
without  your  permission?" 

"  Strictly  speaking,  I  suppose  not." 

"You  could,  I  suppose,  put  me  in  prison  then 
for  stealing  these  mushrooms?" 

"  Certainly." 

"  You  make  me  quite  frightened." 

This  heavenly  being  had  a  curious  boyish 
humor  —  a  suggestion,  absurd  as  it  may  sound, 
of  gaminerie. 

"  There  is  one  way  out  of  the  difficulty,"  said 
Wasteneys,  "  if  you  care  to  take  it." 


Meriel  87 


"Oh?" 

"  That  we  breakfast  together  on  your  stolen 
mushrooms." 

"  Without  salt  ?  " 

"  Oh  no  !  exquisitely  cooked  by  my  own  hand 
—  and  some  excellent  coffee  too." 

"  Here?  Are  you  a  magician?  Can  you  make 
a  frying-pan  v/ut  of  the  morning  air?  —  and  I  don't 
see  any  coffee  growing  in  the  meadow." 

"  I  know  where  to  find  both  coffee  and  frying- 
pan,"  and,  as  Wasteneys  spoke,  he  pointed  to  a 
little  shepherd's  hut  in  a  hidden  corner  of  the 
meadow. 

It  had  been  one  of  his  fancies  to  place  it  there, 
and  furnish  it  with  kettle  and  tea-pot  and  the  vari- 
ous utensils  and  materials  necessary,  when  the 
fancy  took  him,  to  make  his  own  breakfast  on 
his  early  morning  walks.  Wasteneys  took  a  key 
from  his  pocket,  and  unlocked  the  door. 

"  You  are  delightful !  "  said  the  girl.  He  had 
unconsciously  struck  the  chord  of  wildness  to  which 
her  nature  vibrated. 

"  Now,"  said  Wasteneys,  "  while  I  light  the  fire, 
you  take  this  jug  and  bring  some  water  from  the 
stream.  You  will  find  it  down  there  by  those  alders 
at  the  bottom  of  the  meadow." 

"  Oh,  I  know  the  stream,"  said  Meriel ;  "  have  n't 
I  caught  trout  there  for  the  last  month?  " 


88       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"  You  have  ?  "  said  Wasteneys,  with  admiration ; 
and  then  added,  "for  the  last  month,"  meaning 
"  and  we  have  been  all  this  time  so  near,  and  have 
never  met  before  !  " 

But  Meriel  was  already  off  to  the  stream,  swing- 
ing the  jug  in  her  hand,  and  striding  like  a  glad 
boy. 

When  she  returned,  Wasteneys  had  lit  the  fire, 
and  sat  at  the  door  of  the  hut  peeling  the  mush- 
rooms. 

"  Have  we  any  milk?  "  said  Meriel,  in  a  practical 
voice. 

"  I  'm  afraid  we  have  n't." 

"  I  saw  a  cow  just  now,"  said  Meriel,  smiling, 
"  who  would,  I  think,  be  glad  to  give  us  some.  Is 
she  your  cow,  do  you  know?  Will  you  give  me 
permission  to  steal  some  milk?" 

"  You  can  milk  !  " 

"  Of  course.  Let  me  take  that  stool,  and  this 
jug,"  and  off  she  went  again.  Wasteneys  heard 
her  voice  calling  soothingly  to  the  milk-mother 
down  in  the  meadow,  who  by  this  had  begun  to 
low,  plaintively  reproaching  a  neglectful  herdsman, 
that  by  some  chance  had  missed  her  as  he  had 
driven  the  herd  to  the  milking  two  hours  before. 

In  a  short  time  Meriel  returned  with  a  jug  full 
of  warm  frothing  milk. 

"  I  'm  afraid  I  drank  out  of  the  jug,"  she  said. 


Meriel  89 

"  I  can't  resist  fresh  milk  —  and  the  poor  old  thing 
wanted  to  give  me  far  more." 

Wasteneys  was  by  this  occupied  with  the  mush- 
rooms, which  were  deliciously  browning  in  seas  of 
hissing  butter. 

"  Shall  I  lay  the  table?"  said  Meriel. 

"  Do,"  said  Wasteneys,  as  he  pointed  to  a  small 
cupboard,  "you  will  find  everything  in  there." 

Already  they  were  strangely  at  home  together. 

"  You  were  right,"  said  Meriel,  presently,  "  you 
can  cook.  These  mushrooms  are  delicious." 

"  And  the  coffee  ?  "  asked  Wasteneys. 

"  I  never  tasted  such  coffee." 

"Are  you  happy?"  asked  Wasteneys,  presently. 

"Very.     And  you?" 

"  Very." 

Of  course,  they  said  many  other  things  to  each 
other  —  like  any  ordinary  human  beings.  They 
talked  of  trout-fishing,  and  birds  and  beasts  and 
butterflies  —  of  which  Wasteneys  had  a  very  inti- 
mate knowledge,  which  greatly  interested  Meriel. 

Meanwhile,  the  morning  was  rapidly  growing 
into  the  forenoon,  and  suddenly  Meriel  rose.  "  I 
must  go  now." 

So  near  had  they  come  in  this  short  time,  as  by 
the  renewal  of  an  old  intercourse  —  rather  than  by 
the  quick  ripening  of  a  new  acquaintance  —  that 


90       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

there  seemed  something  absurd  in  their  parting  at 
all.  They  took  each  other's  hands  very  simply, 
and  looked  into  each  other's  eyes,  a  sudden  gravity 
coming  over  them  —  and  it  seemed  nothing  new  or 
strange  for  Wasteneys  to  be  saying  very  quietly : 
"  I  love  you." 

"I  know,"  answered  Meriel,  "and  I  love  you. 
But  we  shall  never  be  happier  than  we  have  been 
this  morning.  You  must  not  love  me  like  that. 
Love  me  as  you  would  love  a  tree  or  a  wild  bird 
or  a  star ;  but  not  as  a  woman.  I  can  never  make 
you  happy.  Now,  kiss  me." 

Wasteneys  took  her  in  his  arms.  Yet,  when  she 
had  gone,  he  said  to  himself  that  it  was  a  strange 
kiss ;  there  seemed  so  little  of  "  the  human  trouble  " 
in  it.  So  one  might  be  kissed  by  a  dear  sister,  or 
be  taken  into  the  cool  heart  of  a  flower. 

"  We  shall  meet  again,"  Meriel  had  said  as  she 
went  away,  "  but  we  must  not  fix  a  time.  If  we 
are  to  meet,  we  shall  meet.  How  dare  we  fix  a 
day  and  an  hour  for  the  soul !  " 

But  Wasteneys  had  something  commonplace  and 
earthly  in  his  composition  that  set  his  heart  aching 
at  this  speech.  He  felt  that  it  was  wonderful  in 
Meriel  to  feel  like  that,  but,  all  the  same,  he  would 
have  preferred  a  simple  definite  appointment,  after 
the  manner  of  this  world. 

After   all,    Meriel   was    more   human   than    her 


Meriel  9 1 

words  —  for  when  Wasteneys  took  his  walk  next 
morning,  quite  hopeless  of  such  a  miracle  happen- 
ing twice,  there  she  was  again. 

"  I  had  to  come.,"  she  said ;  and  she  put  up  her 
face  to  be  kissed,  as  though  she  had  been  his 
child. 

For  several  successive  mornings  they  met  in  this 
way,  and  then  she  suddenly  vanished,  like  the 
moon  when  it  has  completed  its  quarters.  As 
Wasteneys  entered  the  meadow  that  morning,  his 
heart  sank  with  a  premonition  that  she  would  not 
be  there,  and,  coming  to  his  hut,  he  found  a  letter 
pinned  to  the  door.  She  had  been  there  before 
him. 

She  could  come  thus  and  slip  away  again,  and 
bear  not  to  see  him !  There  he  vaguely  felt  was 
a  difference  in  their  loves.  The  letter  was  brief, 
but  filled  with  an  unearthly  intensity  and  fairy- 
like  exquisiteness  of  feeling.  So  a  star  —  un- 
conscious of  its  starriness  —  might  write  to  a  moth 
that  loved  it. 


CHAPTER   XV 

A  VIGIL 

WASTENEYS'  meeting  with  Meriel  made 
conscious  for  the  first  time  a  latent 
expectancy  in  his  attitude  to  life.  He 
had  deemed  himself  content,  happily  busied  with 
his  art  or  the  various  occupations  of  a  young  man 
socially  fortunate.  But  now  he  realized  that,  un- 
consciously, he  had  been  all  the  time  waiting  for 
something  to  happen  —  something,  one  might  say, 
miraculous,  which  would  suddenly  fill  life  with  an 
almost  supernatural  sense  of  perfect  joy.  We 
must  all  of  us  be  familiar  with  those  dreams  in 
which  we  imagine  that  our  heart's  desire  —  hope- 
lessly unrealizable  in  the  daylight  of  fact  —  has 
suddenly  been  granted  to  us.  Perhaps  we  dream 
that  some  one  long  since  dead  and  lost  to  us  has 
never  been  dead  at  all.  They  come  to  us  with 
shining  faces,  and  the  old  aching  heart  is  suddenly 
replaced  by  a  thrilling  security.*  Our  hopes  were 
not  foolish  after  all.  Here  they  are  —  safe,  safe. 
We  shall  never  lose  them  again.  The  fairy  tale 
of  life  has  come  true. 


A  Vigil  93 

So  with  Wasteneys.  In  meeting  Meriel  he 
realized  for  the  first  time  that  life  is  meant  to 
flower  in  an  ideal  transfiguration ;  that,  uncon- 
sciously, we  all  dream  of,  and  wait  for,  that  flower- 
ing; and  that,  as  with  some  trees  in  the  natural 
world,  the  life-tree  of  some  may  never  flower  at 
all,  or  suddenly  as  by  miracle  once  in  a  hundred 
years. 

There  are  two  revelations  —  perhaps  one  at 
heart  —  which  perfect  life  by  throwing  across  it 
this  ideal  glory:  the  revelation  of  Religion,  and 
the  revelation  of  Love ;  and  the  half-conscious 
longing  which  even  simple,  common  natures 
know  for  this  breaking  into  flower  of  the  staid 
leafage  of  their  lives  we  call  the  desire  of  "  ro- 
mance." Romance !  That  is  the  lead  of  daily 
life  suddenly  turning  to  gold,  in  the  fire  of  an 
unfamiliar  emotion,  a  strange  experience,  a  face 
like  morning  in  heaven. 

Love  makes  us  radiantly  certain  of  two  things : 
certain  that  life  really  meant  us  to  be  happy,  after 
all ;  and  certain  of  the  soul's  immortality.  Love 
has  but  one  fear :  that ,  love  may  end  suddenly  as 
it  began,  that  the  magic  light  may  suddenly  fade, 
and  leave  the  world  gray  once  more,  as  it  was  be- 
fore the  magic  light  streamed  across  it. 

To  have  met  Meriel  was  for  Wasteneys  the 
same  as  if  some  religious  soul  tossed  in  doubt 


94       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

should  suddenly  be  -blest  with  a  blinding  vision 
of  the  Holy  Mother;  blinding,  yet  bringing 
with  it  a  calm  indubitable  assurance  of  heavenly 
realities. 

And  it  seemed  too  that  Meriel's  meeting  with 
Wasteneys  had  meant  for  her  a  like  exaltation  of 
the  spirit.  Her  letter  revealed  her  in  hushed 
adoration  before  the  mystery  which  had  thus 
suddenly  been  shown  to  them.  "  Let  me  be  still 
and  live  and  wonder,"  she  wrote,  concluding,  as 
with  face  raised  in  prayer,  a  letter  of  strange 
superhuman  ecstasy.  But  Wasteneys  sought  in 
vain  for  the  human  cry,  the  simple  earthly  long- 
ing for  the  nearness  of  the  beloved,  which  his  own 
less  transcendental  nature  craved.  It  seemed  as 
if  she  loved  not  him  but  the  Love  which  meeting 
him  had  revealed  to  her.  He  was  a  priest  who 
had  revealed  to  her  a  great  and  lovely  mystery; 
and  she  called  on  him  to  worship  it  with  her. 
Alas  !  the  priest's  eyes  were  on  the  mortal  woman. 
It  was  not  Love  he  loved,  it  was  Meriel.  But 
Meriel's  gaze  was  on  the  star  that  had  been  born 
of  their  living  eyes  —  as  a  mother,  in  loving  her 
child,  will  sometimes  forget  the  husband  through 
whom  it  came  into  being. 

Wasteneys  loved  her  after  the  manner  of  men  and 
women  who  dream  of  a  fair  home  together,  and 
little  children,  born  of  their  love.  His  dream  was 


A  Vigil  95 

divine,  but  it  was  domestic  too :  a  Holy  Family, 
with  Meriel  as  the  Madonna.  But  very  soon  he 
realized  that  this  dream  could  never  be  fulfilled.  It 
was  as  though  one  should  ask  some  airy  being  of 
the  element  to  come  and  keep  house  with  us  under 
a  roof,  some  sylph,  whose  only  home  is  among  the 
star-beams  and  the  ranging  winds. 

It  was  the  gradual,  but  certain,  realization  of  this 
as  time  went  on  that  had  filled  Wasteneys  with  all 
that  unworthy  disintegrating  sorrow.  Alas !  this 
love,  so  unearthly  in  its  spiritual  exaltation,  was  to 
prove  a  love  of  peculiar  hopelessness.  Superhu- 
man in  its  joy  —  alas  !  it  was  to  prove  superhuman 
in  its  conditions  too.  It  may  be  said  that  if  Waste- 
neys had  been  made  of  finer  clay,  he  would  have 
been  content  with  this  transcendental  union,  and 
entered  into  Meriel's  dream  of  a  love  that  was  as 
content  to  be  far  as  to  be  near  in  a  world  where 
space  and  time  did  not  exist,  divinely  indifferent  to 
human  satisfactions.  But  this  would  be  to  ask,  not 
so  much  a  refinement  of  mortal  clay  as  human 
material  not  human  at  all.  One  might  as  well  ask 
a  man  to  breathe  without  air,  or  to  breathe  in 
water,  like  a  fish,  or,  like  a  salamander,  in  the  fire. 
It  was  no  more  a  duty  of  Wasteneys'  nature  to 
adapt  itself  to  Meriel's  conditions  of  loving  than  it 
was  a  duty  of  hers  to  adapt  itself  to  his.  They 
loved  differently,  and  the  difference  made  an  airy 


96       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

barrier  between  them  which  neither  could  perma- 
nently pass.  For  brief  hours  Meriel  could  become 
tenderly  and  gayly  human  —  a  simple  woman,  a 
home-woman,  a  mother  of  little  human  babes  — 
and  for  brief  hours  Wasteneys  could  reach  up  into 
her  ideal  element,  and  forget  that  he  was  a  man,  a 
human  husband  and  father.  In  such  hours  each 
dreamed  delusively  that  at  last  their  own  dream 
of  union  was  to  be  made  perfect.  But  too  soon 
came  the  understanding  that  they  had  not  meant 
alike,  after  all.  Wasteneys  had  all  the  time  been 
hoping  that  perhaps  the  moment  had  now  come 
when  the  sylph-woman  would  become  all  woman, 
and  make  her  home  in  his  arms  forever  — a  simple 
human  wife. 

In  the  three  years  which  had  gone  by  since  their 
first  meeting  he  had  met  Meriel  only  five  times. 
Suddenly,  after  months  of  waiting,  the  silence  would 
flower  in  a  letter  —  tender  and  longing  as  if  it  were 
the  love-letter  of  a  veritable  human  woman.  It  al- 
most seemed  as  if  Meriel  was  like  one  of  those 
fabled  beings  who  are  human  only  for  certain  brief 
hours  each  year.  Unconsciously,  Wasteneys  was 
waiting  for  these  letters  all  the  year.  Meanwhile, 
he  filled  in  the  time,  as  those  who  wait  are  apt  to 
do  — trivially,  sometimes  unworthily. 

Here  it  was  that  Meriel  harmed  him,  though  she 
knew  nothing  of  what  she  did.  It  never  occurred 


A  Vigil  97 

to  her  that  it  was  cruel  to  leave  him  thus  month 
after  month  without  a  word.  She  herself  felt  no 
need  of  letters  from  him,  no  need  to  see  his  face ; 
and  yet  she  loved  him  all  the  time,  in  her  strange 
way.  To  her  he  was  always  present.  Only,  it 
seemed,  once  a  year  did  the  longing  come  over 
her  to  see  him  face  to  face,  to  look  into  his  eyes 
and  touch  his  hand.  So  much  human  nourishment 
her  starry  passion  needed  —  so  much,  but  alas  !  no 
more. 

And  those  five  meetings  had  told  him  little  more 
of  the  human  Meriel  than  he  had  known  at  the 
beginning.  She  had  told  him  nothing  of  herself, 
nor  had  she  cared  to  ask  anything  about  him. 
Such  particulars  were  irrelevant  for  two  who  met, 
so  to  say,  merely  as  essential  personalities,  divested 
of  incidental  associations  and  conditions.  They 
might  as  well  discuss  housekeeping  or  dressmak- 
ing. Wasteneys'  value  for  Meriel  was  an  ideal 
value.  To  his  mere  human  history  she  was  indif- 
ferent, and  he  was  well  content  for  the  brief  hour 
that  she  lived  in  his  eyes  to  "  be  still  and  live  and 
wonder." 

To  the  average  human  being  in  love  those  meet- 
ings would  have  seemed  strangely  unlike  the  meet- 
ings of  lovers.  They  were  made  up  of  childish 
surface  gayety,  as  of  happy  children  on  a  picnic, 
and  —  silence.  Meriel  had  an  almost  terrible  love 

7 


9  8       The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

of  silence.  She  seemed  to  fear  words  as  she  feared 
every  other  human  device  of  expression.  "  Words 
are  nearly  always  wrong,"  she  said,  "  and  when 
they  are  right  they  are  unnecessary."  And  as  she 
and  Wasteneys  would  sit  with  their  hands  clasped 
across  their  country  luncheon  table  —  for  some- 
times they  had  met  at  an  old  inn  they  had  fancied, 
and  sometimes  in  the  fields  —  it  was  true  indeed 
that  silence  said  all.  Sometimes  Meriel  would 
break  it  with  a  deep  sigh  of  happiness,  just  to 
say: 

"  So  you  are  really  alive.  I  have  seen  you  once 
more.  Now  I  can  be  alone  again." 

It  was  idle  to  wonder  why  she  should  thus  be 
content  with  looking  once  a  year  into  the  face  that 
might  be  all  day  and  every  day  within  her  sight. 
When  Wasteneys  sometimes  whispered  that,  the 
untamed  look  would  come  into  her  eyes,  the  look 
of  the  bird  that  feared  the  cage.  She  would 
look  at  him  half  defiantly  and  half  piteously,  as 
though  begging  him  not  to  rob  her  of  her  wild 
wings. 

When  Wasteneys  came  to  the  end  of  the  little 
packet  of  letters,  he  turned  to  the  book  in  which 
we  have  before  seen  him  writing.  To-night  he 
was  insatiable  for  memories.  And  even  his  own 
records  of  past  moments  of  feeling  had  a  value  for 
him  almost  as  if  they  had  been  written  by  Meriel 


A  Vigil  99 

herself,  impregnated  as  they  were  with  that  im- 
mediacy of  impression  which  words,  simple  enough, 
written  in  an  emotional  present,  are  sometimes 
able  to  retain  far  into  the  future,  when  perhaps 
the  opportunities  of  such  emotion  can  occur  no 
more.  Such  is  the  value  of  a  journal,  such  is  the 
value  of  all  concrete  expression.  A  journal  of 
old  feeling  is  like  a  telescope  through  which  we 
see  the  past  history  of  the  heart,  not  as  a  mere 
hazy  cloud  of  distant  glory,  but  separate  star  by 
star,  moment  by  moment.  The  old  agonies,  the 
old  ecstasies,  may  thus  be  repeated  for  us,  as  by 
some  diabolical  marvel  of  physical  science.  Was- 
teneys,  fanatically  eager  to  protect  his  passion 
against  the  slightest  dulling  of  time,  had  written 
in  this  book  from  day  to  day  the  history  of  his 
heart.  Sometimes  it  was  a  poem,  sometimes  it 
was  an  extract  from  one  of  Mend's  letters,  some- 
times it  was  a  letter  of  his  own  in  which  it  had 
seemed  to  him  that  he  had  used  words  at  a  for- 
tunate moment  —  under  the  inspiring  influence  of 
some  literary  planet !  There  were  many  moods 
and  moments  recorded  —  moods  even  of  rebellion 
against  this  tyranny  of  the  ideal  —  though  these 
were  few,  and  chiefly  one  must  notice  the  almost 
pathetic  patience  with  which  Wasteneys  tried  to 
understand  and  adapt  himself  to  an  ideal  of  love 
which  was  not  his  own,  but  the  imperious  fantastic 


ioo      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

dream  of  a  beautiful  non-human  being  in  the  de- 
lusive shape  of  a  human  woman.  The  whole  of 
The  Sad  Heart  of  Pagan  Wasteneys  can  never  be 
published,  but  the  next  chapter  consists  of  a  few 
of  its  most  important  pages. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

"  THE  SAD   HEART  OF  PAGAN  WASTENEYS  " 

I  AM  trying,  God  knows,  to  understand  this 
strange  and  bitter  love  —  this  Love  whose  two 
words  are  Absence  and  Silence.  To-day  in 
a  mood,  I  am  afraid,  of  some  bitterness,  I  wrote 
these  lines,  trying  rather  after  the  expression  of 
what  it  would  seem  Meriel  wishes  me  to  feel,  than 
what  I  really  feel  myself  —  the  tentative  expres- 
sion of  an  abstract  love,  of  which  both  Meriel  and 
I  are  the  accidental  instruments.  One  may  come 
to  love  the  violin  for  the  music  it  stores  within  it, 
but  such  love  is  mere  association,  and  our  real 
love  is  for  the  music.  So  is  it  that  Meriel  loves 
me.  She  loves  Love — not  me.  Ah,  if  only  I 
could  love  Meriel  in  the  same  way ! 

"  To  love  ! 
That  is  my  prayer. 
Gifted  to  love, 

Just  the  old  simple  everlasting  way; 
Of  all  life's  gifts 
That  is  the  gift  I  crave. 


Ib2   :  The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

4<  I  ask  not  kindness, 
I  ask  not  any  gift  or  any  grace, 
Or  any  charity ; 
The  love  I  mean 
Is  not  for  you  to  give  or  take  away. 

"  That  you  are  cruel 
Shall  be  no  less  provocative 
Than  that  you're  kind, 
And  whether  you  remember  or  forget 
Shall  to  the  love  I  crave 
Be  equal  lure. 

"  I  ask  not  nearness, 
You  are  ever  near  ; 
I  ask  not  sympathy 
In  common  aims, 
I  ask  not  comprehension. 
I  ask  not  anything. 

"  Only  I  pray  to  love, 
And  bring  my  heart 
Gladly  for  you  to  break, 
If  break  it  can, 

Gladly  to  feel  your  fair  contemptuous  feet 
Grind  it  beneath  you 
In  the  passionate  dust. 
Yea,  break  my  heart, 
For  that  were  ecstasy  ! 

"  Think  not  't  is  you  I  crave, 
You  to  possess,  command,  nay  !  nor  to  serve ; 
My  love  would  not  be  kind, 
Nor  live  in  offices  of  tenderness  ; 
You  to  the  thing  I  crave 
Are  but  the  accident  from  which  it  springs. 


"  Sad  Heart  of  Wasteneys  "        103 

"  It  is  not  admiration, 
It  is  not  gratitude, 
It  is  only  love,  — 
A  madness, 

A  glory  burning  in  the  lonely  brain. 
A  fearful  fire  filling  the  lonely  heart. 

"  To  love,  to  love,  to  love  ! 
Is  this  the  way  ?  " 

To-day  I  said  to  myself:  If  you  love  her,  how 
can  you  follow  unworthy  pleasures  which,  before 
you  taste  them,  you  know  to  be  dust  and  ashes. 
Ah  !  ask  one  who  writhes  in  torment  why  he  seeks 
the  anodyne  that  gives  him  at  least  a  little  ease  — 
though  alas !  it  is  but  renewing  his  capacity  for 
further  pain. 

And,  dwelling  on  this  thought,  I  wrote  this  son- 
net, imagining  an  accuser  —  who  is  none  other 
than  my  own  heart;  for  only  to  my  own  heart  is 
Meriel  known. 

"  I  heard  a  liar  say  my  love  doth  cease, 

Heart  of  my  heart,  because  sometimes  I  rest 
My  burning  head  upon  some  other  breast, 

Seeking  in  all  this  hell  a  little  peace ; 

A  little  comfort  in  this  long  disease 

Of  loss  I  suffer,  loss  by  them  unguessed 

Who  find  in  the  new-born  East  for  long-lost  West 

Sufficient  heaven.     I  am  not  of  these. 

"  But,  sometimes,  when  the  life  I  may  not  kill 
Grinds  pitiless  iron  on  the  screaming  nerve, 


1 04     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

I  cry  for  woman  as  ether,  woman  as  wine, 
Lest  Death's  black  poppies  in  my  hair  I  twine 
Thus,  faithful-faithless,  work  I  on  until 
Finished  the  bidding  of  the  saint  I  serve." 


In  a  like  mood  of  self-accusation  I  wrote  this 
fable  also: 

"  '  What  a  wonderful  influence  you  have  on  the  sea ! ' 
said  a  star  to  the  moon. 

"'That  depends  upon  what  you  call  an  influence/ 
replied  the  moon. 

"  '  It  is  true  that  the  sea  worships  me,  and  follows  me 
whither  I  will,  like  a  great  shaggy  dog  —  but,  so  far  as  I 
can  see,  his  love  of  me  has  done  nothing  to  soften  his 
cruel  heart,  he  is  as  wild  a  liver  now  as  when  we  first 
met,  and  his  bosom,  as  of  old,  is  full  of  monsters.'  " 

Men  talk  of  the  influence  of  women.  But  do 
women  really  influence  us  at  all? 

It  was  Meriel's  birthday  to-day.  I  could  not 
resist  breaking  the  silence  with  some  flowers. 
With  them  I  sent  these  lines,  which  I  copy  out 
only  because  they  are  true : 

"  True  heart, 
True  heart, 

I  have  no  joy  but  thee. 
Sugared  delights  may  be, 


Sad  Heart  of  Wasteneys  "        105 


And  colored  toys, 
But  my  enduring  joys 

Must  come  from  thee  ; 

Always  and  always,  love, 

Must  come  from  thee." 


Meriel  wrote  to-day : 

"  Do  you  believe  in  an  immortal  love  which 
ceases  but  to  grow  in  sleep  more  perfect?  Can 
you  endure  the  silence  of  who  knows  how  many 
centuries  to  come  —  and  yet  still  love  me  at  the 
end?" 

I  answered :  "  Very  little  child,  I  shall  love  you 
as  long  as  this  strange  life  lasts  —  longer,  I  cannot 
say,  as  I  am  too  old  and  too  real  to  make  promises 
for  an  eternity  of  which  I  know  nothing  " 

I  have  had  a  strange  feeling  this  week  that  Meriel 
was  in  London,  though  I  have  no  word  from  her ; 
and  the  feeling  has  been  so  strong  that  I  have 
walked  the  streets  looking  for  her  —  in  vain.  As 
I  walked  I  made  this  little  song: 

"  I  sought  through  London  for  one  face, 

London  with  all  her  lovely  faces, 
At  every  hour  in  every  place 
I  sought  my  one  beloved  face, 
Yea  !  sought  it  in  unlovely  places. 

"  But,  though  I  waited  all  day  long, 
She  never  never  never  came, 


1 06      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

In  vain  I  drown  my  heart  in  song, 
In  vain  each  day  I  call  her  name  — 

God  give  me  courage  to  be  strong, 
And  love  her  still  the  same." 


[Letter  from  Wasteneys  to  Meriel,  written  while 
at  a  little  fishing  village  in  Brittany.] 

"  Impossible  dear  fairy  —  whom  I  have  just 
raised  my  eyes  from  this  paper  to  look  at  and 
say :  '  Is  it  possible  that  that  wonderful  being 
there  loves  me  ?  ' 

"  I  have  just  sat  through  a  wonderful  sunsetting 
down  there  in  the  old  fishing  harbor,  my  back 
against  the  sea,  at  the  far  end  of  a  rude  pier  of 
tumbled  stones,  fenced  in  by  a  strong  basket-work 
of  beams  and  piles  —  and  my  face  to  the  sky, 
made*  curiously  heart-breaking  with  rigging  and 
old  men's  faces.  The  sky  was  a  smoky  orange, 
and  the  sea  a  strange  immaterial  silver,  very  pale 
and  volatile — everything  unreal,  and  yet  every- 
thing so  real  one  could  hardly  bear  it  I  watched 
the  patient  fishermen  hauling  in  their  heavy  boats 
over  the  sandy  bar,  at  the  narrow  mouth  of  the 
little  corral,  where  they  all  come  scudding  in  to 
stable  at  evening,  and  the  manly  little  sailor  lads 
rowing  out  briskly  in  the  phantasmal  light  just  for 
a  frolic,  and  the  ancient  man  who  came  to  light 
the  funny  old  lantern  at  the  end  of  the  pier.  .  .  . 


"  Sad  Heart  of  Wasteneys  "        1 07 

O,  and  a  hundred  human  touches  and  a  hundred 
lights  and  changes  on  the  face  of  the  beautiful  sad, 
sad  world;  and  all  the  time  I  wanted  you  to  be 
with  me,  for  it  is  only  you  and  I  together  who  can 
understand  anything  like  that.  We  should  n't  have 
spoken  a  word,  but  we  should  have  loved  it  just 
in  the  same  way,  with  childish  eyes  —  and,  having 
stayed  till  we  were  quite  sure  we  had  caught  cold, 
we  would  have  turned  next  to  the  hotel  in  search 
of  cognac  or  hot  whisky  ! 

"  O,  little  child,  little  child,  I  care  for  nothing  at 
all  sad  or  glad  in  life,  except  to  know  that  you 
really  love  me.  Nothing  could  seem  so  happy 
and  successful  for  me  as  just  to  come  and  lay  my 
head  on  your  shoulder,  the  whole  world  else,  with 
its  arts,  and  its  ambitions,  forgotten.  I  have  felt 
this  first  for  you  of  all  human  beings,  and  I  shall 
never  feel  it  for  any  one  else.  You  are  my  one 
necessity.  Without  you  I  can  seem  to  be  happy, 
and  seem  to  succeed  in  a  hundred  ways,  for  in  the 
world  are  many  brave  and  loving  hearts,  and  many 
beautiful  things  to  do ;  but  without  you,  my  inner- 
most heart  will  be  dusty  with  failure. 

"  My  very  soul  grows  sick  to  think  that  you 
may,  just  this  very  tick  of  the  clock,  have  ceased 
to  love  me ! 

"O,  my  little  child  — don't  let  us  lose  each 
other !  Don't  take  fancies  and  think  you  don't 


io8      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

love  me,  or  I  you»  Be  fantastic  in  all  else,  but 
not  in  our  love.  In  this  just  be  prosaic  and  com- 
mon-sensible, as  you  know  so  well,  thank  goodness, 
how  to  be.  Yes,  I  think  it  is  the  prose  I  want 
most  to  live  with  you,  with  the  humorous  childish 
touches  that  are  ours. 

"  Child,  do  you  remember  all  the  times  we  have 
been  together,  the  way  we  looked  at  each  other, 
the  sound  of  our  voices?  I  went  to  our  little  inn 
the  other  day,  and  had  lunch  laid  for  us  in  our 
little  room,  and  a  bottle  of  our  own  wine  waiting 
for  you.  ,  .  .  But  you  never  came.  So  I  set 
a  rose  in  your  place. 

"  Another  day,  I  went  to  the  Wood  of  Silence 
—  do  you  remember?  —  where  I  grew  angry  with 
your  knotted  dumbness,  and  walked  away  from 
you  up  and  down  on  the  common,  till  you  came 
up  to  me,  like  a  child,  with  eyes  just  hinting  tears, 
as  the  sky  at  twilight  hints  stars  —  and  said  you 
had  been  '  naughty.'  Little  angel-face.  God  help 
me ! 

"  Meriel  — will  you  never  love  me  with  a  simple 
wish  to  have  me  by  you  —  as  I  love  you  ! 

"  O,  forgive  me  for  breaking  the  silence.  To- 
night I  felt  I  must  speak  —  must  call  to  you.  Do 
you  hear  me,  away  up  there  in  the  stars  where  you 
live  —  Greatest  of  all  things  Great?  " 


"  Sad  Heart  of  Wasteneys  "        1 09 

Is  it  not  strange  and  terrible  to  think  that  as  I 
was  writing  that  letter  to  Meriel  she  was  at  the 
same  moment  writing  this  to  me? 

[Part  of  a  letter  from  Meriel,  crossing  letter  from 
Wasteneys  just  quoted.] 

"  O,  say  once  more  that  you  are  mine  —  that  I 
am  yours.  And  then  I  think  that  Heaven's  gates 
will  open  and  pour  forth  wonderful  music  —  which 
I  shall  hear  forever,  until  I  die.  You  were  mine 
since  the  beginning  of  the  world.  How  can  we 
part?  My  little  child  —  all  things  pass;  but  the 
great  truths  remain,  and  we  live  in  their  shadow  or 
their  light.  Our  love  is  a  great  truth,  I  think — • 
a  truth  so  sure  that  I  feel  that  I  need  never  see 
you,  never  possess  you,  yet  see  you  always  and 
possess  you  always. 

"  Last  night  I  walked  along  the  road  with  you, 
and,  as  we  talked,  the  stars  and  the  warm  winds 
caressed  us  —  and  the  water  lapped  the  shore  at 
our  feet,  so  lazily.  .  .  .  We  can  always  be  to- 
gether now,  dear  child.  My  heart  leaps  to  think 
of  the  frolics  we  can  have,  here  in  this  silent  land, 
so  full  of  voices. 

"  There  are  moments  when  I  think  that  I  shall 
really  become  Silence  indeed  —  a  living,  gleaming 
Silence !  I  am  growing  so  used  to  sitting  alone 
with  my  soul  —  talking  to  it  in  the  language  of 


1 1  o      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

Silence.  I  often  feel  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
world  so  beautiful  as  this  silence.  I  'm  so  glad  you 
understand  that  side  of  me  —  for  it  is  such  a  large 
side !  The  side  that  speaks  grows  more  and  more 
afraid  to  speak  —  more  and  more  fond  of  its  silent 
sister  whom  it  fears  to  disturb." 


Sitting  watching  the  sea  to-night,  I  made  this 
song  for  Meriel. 

"  O  love,  I  look  across  the  sea, 

The  sails  go  by, 

From  vastness  into  vastness  fade, 
Lost  in  the  sky. 

"  O  the  great  world  !  so  wide  and  cold, 

And  you  so  far  ! 
If  only  you  could  come  as  near 
As  yonder  star. 

"  Aloft,  alone,  I  vex  it  not 

With  me  or  mine, 
So  far  —  yet  am  I  near  enough 
To  see  it  shine." 

Here  is  another  song  I  made  for  her. 

"  Long  after  you  are  dead 

I  will  kiss  the  shoes  of  your  feet, 
And  the  long  bright  hair  of  your  head 
Will  go  on  being  sweet ; 


Sad  Heart  of  Wasteneys  "        1 1 1 


In  each  little  thing  you  wore 
We  shall  go  on  meeting,  love ; 
In  a  ring  we  shall  meet, 
In  a  fan  we  shall  meet, 
Or  a  long-forgotten  glove. 
Long  after  you  are  dead, 
O,  the  bright  hair  of  your  head, 
And  the  shoes  of  your  little  feet !  " 


CHAPTER  XVII 

IN  WHICH  WASTENEYS   SEES  MERIEL 
ONCE  MORE 

THE  candles  had  burnt  low  and  their  light 
was  paling  before  the  dawn  as  Wasteneys 
finished  reading.  He  threw  himself  into 
bed  exhausted  with  his  debauch  of  memory,  and 
was  soon  in  a  sound  sleep,  and  in  his  sleep  he 
dreamed  a  dream  of  simple  happiness.  Meriel 
had  been  changed  into  a  little  human  woman  who 
loved  him,  and  came  with  wifely  eyes  to  give  her 
life  into  his  hands.  He  woke  with  an  intense 
security  of  peace  enfolding  him  like  a  blissful 
music.  And  his  sleep,  instead  of  banishing  a  wild 
wish  that  had  been  born  of  his  reading  in  the 
book  of  the  past,  rather  reinforced  it  with  morning 
vigor.  As  he  had  read,  he  had  felt  that,  whatever 
it  cost,  he  must  see  Meriel  once  more.  He  would 
not  violate  her  seclusion.  She  should  not  see 
him.  All  he  craved  was  to  see  her  —  to  watch 
her  from  a  distance,  as  she  took  her  walks  by  the 
sea  —  to  hold  his  breath  as  she  passed  by,  so 
close  perhaps  that  he  could  almost  touch  her 


Wasteneys  sees  Meriel  113 

dress  with  his  hand — to  watch  her  goings  in  and 
out,  as  he  might  watch  the  Host  being  carried  in 
some  solemn  procession  wherein  he  took  no  part. 
It  was  now  some  six  months  since  he  had  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  her,  and  it  was  hardly  likely 
that  she  was  still  staying  at  the  little  fishing  vil- 
lage from  which  she  had  last  written  —  a  remote, 
rarely-visited  cluster  of  houses  among  the  cliffs  of 
the  Devonshire  coast  —  chosen,  so  she  had  said,  for 
its  wonderful  Silence.  The  Sea  and  the  Silence. 
However,  he  could  at  least  try.  And,  in  his  pres- 
ent mood,  merely  to  travel  in  the  hope  of  seeing 
her  would  be  a  relief  to  the  tension  of  his  spirit. 
Merely  to  look  out  the  trains  made  his  heart  beat 
with  hope.  Who  knows  but  his  dream  might 
come  true,  and  he  should  find  her  waiting  for  him 

—  his  wife  at  last? 

At  all  events,  he  should  see  her  again  —  see  her 
again  —  see  her  again !  O  God,  just  to  see  her 
again ! 

It  was  inadvisable  for  his  plan  that  he  should  go 
to  the  same  village,  for  thus  he  could  hardly  hope 
to  avoid  Meriel's  discovery  of  him ;  but,  as  it  hap- 
pened, knowing  the  coast-line  well,  he  chose  a  still 
more  obscure  fishing  inlet  three  miles  north.  For 
a  mile  or  so  the  coast  near  Meriel's  village  was 
fringed  with  a  thin  woodland,  on  which  he  relied 
for  cover.  He  smiled  boyishly  as  he  thought  of 

8 


1 1 4      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

the  desperate  scouting  tactics  to  which  he  must 
have  recourse  —  in  pursuit  of  a  moonbeam.  He 
was  to  track,  and  spy  upon,  his  love  as  though  she 
were  his  enemy.  His  enemy !  What  if  she  were 
really  that? 

Besides,  still  more  fortunately  for  his  plan, 
Meriel's  village  was  all  clustered  together  at  the 
outlet  of  a  deep,  wooded  cleft,  by  which  a  little 
river  made  its  way  to  the  sea.  For  some  three 
miles  inland  a  path  ran  by  the  river's  side  right  up 
into  the  hills.  Meriel  might  choose  this  landward 
walk,  or  the  walk  along  the  coast  by  the  sea. 
Whichever  she  chose,  Wasteneys  would  be  able  to 
see  even  her  very  starting  out.  The  little  house, 
next  door  to  the  Post  Office,  and  within  a  few 
yards  of  the  Beach  Hotel,  was  well-known  to  him. 
By  some  freak  of  former  occupation  it  was  called 
"  Les  Rossignols,"  and  was  marked  by  the  posses- 
sion of  a  small  balcony  from  its  two  upper  win- 
dows. Wasteneys  had  only  to  place  himself 
sufficiently  early  high  up  on  the  adjacent  hill 
which  commanded  the  whole  village,  to  see  the 
first  faint  smoke  that  rose  from  its  morning  chim- 
ney. No  one  could  go  in  or  out  of  its  rose-clus- 
tered doorway  without  his  seeing  them. 

But  Wasteneys'  train  —  and  twenty  miles  of 
coach  —  brought  him  so  early  to  his  destination  on 
a  certain  moonlit  evening  of  May,  that  he  could 


Wasteneys  sees  Meriel  115 

not  wait  for  morning.  After  a  brief  impatient 
meal,  he  walked  the  three  miles  of  moon-mys- 
terious, sea-murmuring  coast,  and  found  himself  in 
a  thick  hush  of  trees  looking  down  into  a  gulf  of 
moon-white  and  shadow-black  village. 

The  little  boisterous  river  glittered  quartz-like, 
half  in  shadow,  half  in  the  moon  —  making  a 
childish  treble  against  the  recurrent  bass  of  the 
sea.  Ruddy  windows  and  occasional  naked 
lamp-flames  warmed  the  shadows  here  and  there. 
From  the  billiard-room  of  the  Beach  Hotel  came 
a  bar-parlor  radiance.  The  night  was  so  still 
that  one  could  hear  the  click  of  the  billiard  balls, 
and  through  the  undrawn  blinds  Wasteneys  noted 
mechanically  the  marker  flatteringly  scoring  breaks 
of  three  and  four. 

He  had  already  noted  that  the  balcony  windows 
of  "  Les  Rossignols "  shone  with  a  muffled  radi- 
ance. At  least  the  rooms  were  not  empty.  Was 
it  Meriel  behind  those  blinds,  like  a  precious 
jewel  swathed  in  coverings  and  yet  shining 
through  them? 

It  must  be  Meriel.  All  else  had  answered  so 
eloquently  to  the  stress  of  his  mood  —  the  won- 
derful night,  the  little  singing  river,  the  deep- 
sighing,  sympathetic  darkness  of  the  trees,  like 
the  backwoods  of  the  soul,  his  own  high  heart 
happy  and  resolute.  Why  !  he  half  believed  that 


1 1 6      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

if  Meriel  were  not  there,  his  masterful  wonder- 
working love  would  have  power  to  bring  her 
there.  "  If  ye  have  faith  "  —  the  old  words  came 
back  to  him  —  "  ye  shall  move  mountains  "  !  His 
love  seemed  mighty  enough  at  that  moment  to 
take  the  sea  in  its  hand  and  bring  it  to  Meriel  for 
a  garment,  and  to  reach  up  into  the  sky  and 
snatch  the  moon  for  a  pearl  to  clasp  it  with. 

Meriel  must  be  there !  God  denies  us  the 
complete  dial,  but  he  is  usually  generous  with 
moments.  Wasteneys  was  sure  of  this  moment, 
and  his  assurance  was  right.  Presently  the  muf- 
fled light  parted  like  a  leafy  envelope  and  let  slip 
a  flower  of  clear  light.  When  it  had  closed  again 
two  figures  were  seated  on  the  balcony.  Waste- 
neys noted  that  they  were  both  women  —  noted 
it  with  an  unpremeditated  gratitude.  It  only  oc- 
curred to  him  now  for  the  first  time  that  the  other 
figure  might  have  been  a  man  —  for,  of  course,  he 
knew  with  the  first  beat  of  his  heart  that  followed 
his  first  sight  of  that  loved  presence  —  that  it  was 
Meriel.  You  who  have  known  the  bliss  of  seeing 
a  loved  woman  once  more,  after  many  months, 
can  imagine  for  me  the  bliss  that  possessed 
Wasteneys  as  he  looked  on  his  distant,  moon- 
shadowy  Meriel  again.  Presently  Meriel  took 
something  into  her  arms.  Soon  Wasteneys  real- 
ized that  it  was  a  violin  —  and  he  realized,  too,  at 


Wasteneys  sees  Meriel  1 1 7 

the  same  moment,  how  pathetically  little  he  knew 
of  the  daily  occupations  of  her  life,  her  ways  and 
her  tastes.  In  fact,  he  knew  as  little  of  her  as  he 
knew  of  yonder  star.  All  he  really  knew  was  that 
it  was  good  to  see  her  shine  —  but  of  the  inner 
life  of  that  radiant  planet,  set  in  the  sky  like  a 
white  rose,  he  knew  nothing. 

Meriel  began  to  play  very  softly,  almost 
timorously:  tentative  breathings,  half-suppressed 
sighs  of  longing,  little  sudden  frightened  calls  that 
ran  back  again,  as  it  were,  into  the  strings  as  soon 
as  uttered ;  and  then  suddenly,  as  though  deter- 
mined to  dare  to  the  height  and  depth  of  her 
desire,  wood  and  strings  strained  together  in  a 
great  flooding  call  that  seemed  to  fill  the  sky  with 
tall  summoning  angels  of  passion,  with  flocks  of 
little  birds  warbling  desire,  and  silver  butterflies 
of  flitting  hope. 

No  one  who  knew  anything  of  the  mystical 
cabala  of  music  could  doubt  that  here  was  a  soul 
calling  across  the  sea  to  another  soul.  Here  was 
a  soul-call  —  clear  and  full  as  a  bird-call.  Across 
the  hundreds  of  miles  this  soul  was  calling  to  its 
other  soul,  as  sure  of  being  heard  as  when  thrush 
calls  to  thrush  in  the  dawn,  or  the  nightjar  churrs 
heart-brokenly  to  its  fern-hidden  mate  in  the 
thickening  woods. 

Wasteneys'    heart    beat    with    volcanic   world- 


1 1 8     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

creating  joy.  Could  it  be  that  she  was  calling 
him  ?  Surely,  surely ',  she  was  calling  —  and  surely 
it  was  he  she  was  calling.  O  to  be  a  morning 
star,  that  he  might  break  out  into  sudden  answer 
of  singing  from  his  covert  in  the  dark  wood,  or  to 
have  brought  with  him  twelve  nightingales  in  a 
cage  —  shrouded  all  day  in  a  black  velvet  hood, 
but  released  to  singing  on  the  sudden  sight  of  the 
moon.  O,  for  an  answer  to  that  call  —  no  verbal, 
mortal  cry,  no  intermediate  symbolic  articulation 
in  some  provincial  human  tongue,  but  some  es- 
sential cry  of  the  very  soul  and  body  of  things. 
Properly,  there  is  only  one  verb  for  love.  It  is 
not  "  amo"  It  is  not  "  aimer."  It  is  not  the 
softest  Italian  verb.  No  printed  language  of  man 
knows  it.  But  the  violin  knows  it,  and  the  wild 
bird  knows  it,  even  the  sea  knows  it.  The  rose  is 
it,  and  the  moon  is  it.  And  the  look  of  a  man's 
eyes  into  a  woman's  is  it,  and  the  look  of  a 
woman's  eyes  back  again  is  it.  But  no  man  or 
woman  can  say  it,  in  any  language  that  endures. 

Only  a  violin,  and  a  nightingale,  and  a  woman 
talking  in  her  sleep,  can  be  trusted  to  say  it — as 
alone  it  can  worthily  be  said. 

Poor  Wasteneys  felt  humiliatingly  conscious  of 
his  own  narrowness  of  expression  as  Meriel's 
violin  called  across  the  sea. 

Alas !    for  the  stiff  square  words  that  stuck  in 


Wasteneys  sees  Meriel  1 1 9 

his  throat  and  refused  to  melt  into  any  universal 
music.  Poems  he  could  write,  of  course  —  he 
wrote  one  as  he  walked  back  to  his  lodging 
through  the  sea-talking  woods  —  but  what  is  a 
poem  against  a  violin?  Meriel  had  called  him, 
and  he  had  nothing  better  to  answer  her  with  than 
a  poem.  Even  a  pistol-shot  —  a  little  shining 
revolver  (there  was  a  thought !)  — had  been  better 
than  that.  There  had  been  a  real  essential  sound, 
a  sound  that  needed  no  translation,  a  verb  of  a 
universal  language.  But  a  poem !  Yet,  as  the 
only  poor  utterance  he  had,  he  copied  out  the 
poem  on  his  return  to  his  inn. 

The  gods  express  themselves  in  flaming  min- 
erals, that  after  millions  of  years  cool  to  continents 
of  equatorial  green;  man  drills  his  thought  in 
marble ;  woman  cries  herself  into  a  child ;  the 
soldier  wastes  himself  in  fire ;  but  the  poet  deli- 
cately walks  in  a  garden  of  words  —  he  takes  here 
a  petal  and  there  a  petal,  expressing  himself  in 
soft  garlands  of  unperilous  flowers. 

However,  as  Wasteneys  thought  it  worth  while 
to  copy  it  out,  I,  too,  will  reproduce  here  the 
poem  referred  to.  Remember,  in  his  favor,  that  it 
was  really  but  a  form  of  enforced  silence.  He 
longed  for  more  immediate  utterance  of  the  love 
that  was  in  him,  but  that  the  very  reverence  of 
his  love  denied  him. 


i  20     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 
Here  is  the  little,  poem : 

"  Canst  thou  be  true  across  so  many  miles, 
So  many  days  that  keep  us  still  apart  ? 
Ah,  canst  thou  live  upon  remembered  smiles, 
And  ask  no  warmer  comfort  for  thy  heart  ? 

"  I  call  thy  name  right  up  into  the  sky, 

Dear  name,  O  surely  she  shall  hear  and  hark ! 
Nay,  though  I  toss  it  singing  up  so  high> 
It  drops  again,  like  yon  returning  lark. 

"  O  be  a  dove,  dear  name,  and  find  her  breast, 
There  croon  and  nestle  all  the  lonely  day ; 
Go  tell  her  that  I  love  her  still  the  best, 
So  many  days,  so  many  miles,  away." 

After  all,  he  was  not  the  first  man  who  has 
found  himself  unequal  to  answering  a  violin  played 
by  a  beautiful  woman. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

MERIEL   EXPLAINS   HERSELF 

WASTENEYS  was  early  at  his  green 
watch-tower  next  day,  and  Meriel,  still 
apparently  an  early  riser,  was  not  long 
after  him  in  taking  the  morning  air.  She  came 
out  carrying  her  violin-case,  and  with  a  letter  in 
her  hand.  This  she  posted,  and  then,  crossing  the 
little  bridge  that  spanned  the  stream,  took  the 
path  which  led  along  the  beach.  From  his  wood- 
land Wasteneys  would  be  able  to  keep  her  in 
sight  all  the  time.  Through  his  glass  he  could 
bring  her  face  so  near  that  it  seemed  almost  to 
touch  his,  and  he  could  look  so  closely  into  her 
eyes  that  he  felt  she  must  feel  his  eyes  upon  her. 

How  wonderful  it  was  to  see  her  again !  Only 
just  to  be  allowed  to  look  at  her  like  this  day 
after  day!  He  felt  that  that  would  more  than 
content  his  aching  heart.  In  fact,  it  seemed  to 
him  that  his  love  craved  nothing  more,  that  indeed 
there  was  nothing  more  to  crave.  Was  she  not 
right,  perhaps,  after  all,  in  her  aloofness  from 
human  ties?  Such  beauty  was  not  to  wive. 
Would  it  not  naturally  fulfil  itself  in  some  diviner 


122      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

way?  One  might  as  well  dream  that  the  Monna 
Lisa  should  descend  from  her  immortal  canvas,  to 
be  the  mother  of  mortal  babes. 

Yes  !  if  only  he  might  look  at  Meriel,  every  day 
and  all  day  long.  His  passion  was  so  far  sub- 
limated as  to  have  become  a  passion  of  mere  sight 
If  only  the  human  masterpiece  would  consent  to 
the  eternal  gaze  of  the  worshipping  eyes ! 

The  comparison  gave  Wasteneys  a  little  shiver 
of  fear.  He  had  read  in  old  books  of  men  who 
had  loved  statues,  hoping,  maybe,  that  one  day  in 
a  spring  rain  of  warm  kisses  they  would  turn  to 
very  woman  —  heaving,  sighing,  clinging,  violet- 
breathing  woman.  These  men,  he  recalled,  had 
always  gone  mad,  and  sometimes  had  broken  the 
beloved  image  into  a  hundred  white  fragments. 
Was  he  the  victim  of  such  a  dream  ?  Perhaps  he 
was.  He  did  not  care.  There  was  Meriel  picking 
her  way  along  the  shore  —  he  could  see  her,  see 
her.  His  heart  might  still  be  aching,  but  his  eyes 
were  in  heaven. 

He  followed  her  stealthily  through  the  trees. 
At  last  she  came  to  a  secluded  rocky  place,  and, 
sitting  down,  took  her  nightingale  from  its  cage. 
Soon  it  was  singing  once  more  across  the  sea. 
Again  it  was  the  voice  of  longing.  No  one  could 
hear  and  doubt  that  it  was  calling  some  one  —  as 
a  siren  might  sing  to  distant  ships.  Meriel  was 


Meriel  explains  Herself  123 

calling  him !  Very  softly  he  stole  down  the  cliffs 
from  his  hiding-place  —  forgotten  all  his  resolu- 
tions, and,  as  the  last  long  cry  of  the  violin  died 
away,  he  was  within  a  dozen  yards  of  the  woman 
he  loved. 

"  Meriel,"  he  said,  very  softly. 

She  turned  with  a  slight  start. 

"  How  strange  !  "  she  said ;  "  and  yet  I  knew 
you  would  come." 

"  You  were  calling  me?  " 

"  Did  you  not  hear?  " 

"  Did  you  call  me  two  nights  ago  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  I  heard  you  —  "  and  Wasteneys  realized  that 
his  passion  of  memory  had  been  but  an  answer  to 
her  distant  call. 

"  How  wonderful  —  how  terrible  —  life  is,  when 
I  can  call  and  you  can  hear  like  this,"  said  Meriel. 

"  I  grew  suddenly  afraid  of  the  Silence,"  she 
continued,  "  and  longed  to  hold  your  hand  while 
I  listened  to  it." 

"  Still  —  the  Silence  !  "  said  Wasteneys. 

"  I  love  it  more  and  more.  Some  day  I  think  I 
shall  grow  all  Silence,  like  those  who  are  turned  to 
stone  in  fairy-tales.  Words  are  only  attempts  to 
say  over  again  what  nature  has  said  already.  Why 
talk  of  the  sea  when  you  have  the  sea  itself?  So 
soon  as  we  really  feel  .  .  .  but  there  are  already 


1 24     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

two  good  essays-  on  Silence,"   she  ended  with  a 
laugh,  "  and  I  know  you  have  read  them  both." 

"  Let  us  build  a  temple  to  Silence,"  said 
Wasteneys.  "  I  could  dream,"  he  added  presently, 
"  of  a  Trappist  monastery  of  two,  who  should  love 
each  other  forever  in  silence  —  gazing  into  each 
other's  eyes." 

"  Ah  !  "  laughed  Meriel.  "  But  you  would  break 
your  vows  the  first  day.  You  would  be  compelled 
to  say,  *  I  love  you.'  You  could  not  love  without 
words.  Then,  too,  you  would  be  unable  to  resist 
your  fancy  and  your  wit.  I  love  them  both,"  she 
added,  as  if  fearing  to  hurt  him,  "but  you  will 
admit  that  they  are  not  Silence." 

"  Might  not  two  silences  sometimes  crave  the 
offspring  of  words?  "  asked  Wasteneys ;  "  even  the 
Trappists  are.  allowed  speech  once  a  year." 

"  Yes !  but  I  'm  sure  the  true  Trappist  would 
have  only  one  thing  to  say :  '  How  good  is  the 
Silence ! '  " 

"  I  heard  your  violin  calling  to  me  last  night," 
said  Wasteneys.  "Was  that  Silence?" 

"  Yes  !  it  was  the  deepest  Silence,"  said  Meriel, 
laughing.  "  It  was  only  Silence  made  audible,  as 
certain  seers  are  able  to  see  the  forms  that  move 
invisible  to  us  in  the  air.  Human  speech  is  very 
different.  It  is  provincial  sound  —  whereas  the 
speech  of  the  violin  is  universal  sound." 


Meriel  explains  Herself  I  25 

"  Would  you  expect  a  cow,  then,  to  understand 
it?"  asked  Wasteneys. 

"Ah!  it  is  there  you  fail! — you  must  laugh, 
you  must  talk  —  even  in  heaven  !  " 

"  I  don't  think  I  should,"  said  Wasteneys  wist- 
fully, "  if  I  were  sure  it  was  heaven  —  or  rather  if 
I  were  sure  it  was  a  heaven  meant  for  me." 

"Poor  human  child  !  "  said  Meriel.  "  You  have 
been  suffering.  I  can  see  how  lonely  you  have 
been." 

Wasteneys  was  as  humbly  glad  as  a  dog  for  a 
caress, 

"  But,"  said  Meriel,  after  a  while,  "  I  cannot 
help  it !  " 

"  I  know,"  answered  Wasteneys  ;   "  I  love  you." 

He  meant :  "  Crucify  me  as  you  will.  I  am 
yours  till  the  end  of  the  world." 

"  You  think  me  strange,  and  even  cruel,  I  know," 
said  Meriel,  presently. 

"  I  love  you,"  Wasteneys  answered. 

"  But  you  must  try  and  understand,"  Meriel 
continued,  "  that  you  are  no  less  strange  to  me. 
Perhaps  you  think  me  '  inhuman  '  —  so  to  say. 
But  then  I  might  retort  that  you  are  '  human  '  — 
you  have  many  strange  little  warm  needs  that  I 
can't  understand.  And  yet  you  are  capable  of  the 
great  simple  satisfactions  if  you  would  only  try." 

"  Now,  at  least,  I  am  content,"  said  Wasteneys. 


1 26     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"Why?" 

"  Because  I  am  near  you." 

"  Ah,  yes !  but  you  should  be  as  happy  when 
we  are  far  away." 

"  But  why  be  so  afraid  of  nearness?  " 

"  Because  nearness  awakens  the  Little  Needs. 
In  a  sense  it  makes  us  further  away.  It  obscures 
the  great  meaning  by  trivial  expression." 

"Why  am  I  here?" 

"  Because  I  love  you." 

"  Even  you  sometimes  crave  nearness  too." 

"  Yes  !  "  said  Meriel,  half  laughing.  "  I  am  so 
far  human  —  but  it  is  weakness  all  the  same." 

"  Then  you  think  that  the  greatest  lovers  would 
always  be  invisible  to  each  other." 

"  Yes  —  physically    invisible.      Spiritually   they 
are  always  near.     I  never  love  you  so  much  when 
you  are  near  to  me  as  when  you  are  far  away  — 
and  yet  sometimes  I  feel  that  I  must  hold  your 
hands  and  look  into  your  eyes." 

"Even  kiss  me?" 

"  Yes !  even  that,"  said  Meriel,  and  she  kissed 
him. 

"  You  are  human,  after  all,"  said  Wasteneys. 

"  Once  a  year,"  said  Meriel,  laughing. 

"  I  should  have  expected  you  to  understand," 
said  Meriel,  presently. 


Meriel  explains  Herself  i  27 

"  Through  my  mind  I  do,"  said  Wasteneys, 
"  but  such  understanding  amounts  to  little  more 
than  a  recognition  that  your  nature  is  subject  to 
different  laws  than  mine.  I  can  understand  that 
it  is  natural  for  a  bird  to  fly  —  but  alas  !  I  cannot 
fly." 

" Not  with  me?" 

"  Will  you  not  walk  with  me  instead  ?  " 

"  Alas  !  I  cannot !  " 

"  Alas !  I  cannot  fly  —  except  perhaps  once  a 
year.  I  am  flying  now." 

"  I  am  walking,"  said  Meriel. 

"Forget  your  wings,  and  stay  with  me  on  the 
earth  —  till  my  wings  grow ;  and  then  we  can  fly 
away  together  right  up  among  the  stars,  and  never 
come  down  to  earth  any  more." 

"  If  I  stayed  so  long  on  the  earth,  I  should  for- 
get how  to  fly.  Your  wings  would  have  grown, 
perhaps,  but  mine  would  have  withered." 

"  No,"  mused  Meriel  presently,  after  a  silence, 
"  we  love  differently.  We  shall  never  love  the 
same." 

"Can  such  love  continue?  "  asked  Wasteneys. 

"No  —yours  will  die.  It  is  already .  dying  — 
though  you  do  not  yet  know  it,"  said  Meriel,  look- 
ing very  gravely  into  his  eyes.  "  But  mine  will 
last  forever.  Yours  will  die,  because  I  cannot 
give  it  the  human  food  it  craves.  Mine  will  live 


128     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

because  it  asks  nothing  but  the  idea  of  you  .  .  . 
the  dream  of  you  that  exists  in  my  mind.  If  I 
were  to  live  with  you  day  after  day  that  dream 
would  be  dimmed.  Little  daily  cares,  little  human 
blemishes  —  in  themselves  unimportant  —  would 
obscure  it.  I  should  be  unable  to  see  you  as  you 
really  are,  from  very  nearness.  I  should  see  you, 
as  it  were,  through  a  microscope.  I  would  rather 
see  you  far  off,  like  a  star.  Then  you  would  grow 
old,"  and  Meriel  shuddered. 

"But  I  should  love  you  for  those  very  blemishes 
as  well,"  said  Wasteneys  ;  "  they  would  be  dear  to 
me,  not  only  because  they  were  yours,  but  be- 
cause of  their  very  humanity.  And  how  sweet  to 
grow  old  together  !  " 

"  I  cannot  understand,"  said  Meriel.  "  It  seems 
to  me  that  there  is  a  moment  when  the  soul's 
beauty  and  the  body's  beauty  are  one.  That 
moment  is  youth.  All  fresh  and  unused,  the  body 
is  then  as  beautiful  as  the  soul,  but  soon,  alas !  the 
body,  being  made  of  perishable  stuff,  begins  to 
wear,  and  less  and  less  resembles  the  soul  within. 
The  soul  is  growing  more  beautiful,  perhaps,  every 
day,  but  the  body  is  dying.  In  vain  it  strives  to 
answer  to  the  soul  within.  I  know  you  will  say 
that  some  old  faces  are  beautiful.  They  are,  but 
it  is  a  negative  beauty,  like  the  beauty  of  what  we 
call  skeleton  leaves  —  the  beauty  of  a  clean  decay. 


Meriel  explains  Herself  129 

It  does  not  really  represent  the  soul  within,  for  the 
soul  is  always  growing  younger;  and  wrinkled 
cheeks,  however  beautiful  the  wrinkles,  are  age. 
They  speak  of  no  future,  whereas  the  soul  is  all 
future.  No,  the  beauty  of  age  is  only  a  kind 
word.  .  .  ." 

"  You  make  me  wish  that  your  face  was 
wrinkled,  Meriel." 

"  You  shall  never  see  it  then,"  answered  Meriel. 

"  Human  nature,  so  to  say,  is  wrinkles,"  said 
Wasteneys  —  "  and  the  love  of  wrinkles." 

"  How  sad  to  be  human !  "  said  Meriel. 

"  It  is,"  said  Wasteneys,  perhaps  with  an  un- 
conscious bitterness. 

As  Meriel  talked,  Wasteneys  became  conscious 
of  an  unwonted  operation  of  his  mind  which  filled 
him  with  dim  alarm.  At  last  his  mind  said  it  out 
clear :  He  was  criticising  her. 

If  it  had  only  been  Meriel's  mind  that  he  had 
to  encounter  —  these  rather  youthful  transcenden- 
tal opinions  —  he  might  securely  have  counted 
upon  victory.  For  so  had  he  not  talked  ten  years 
ago,  a  dreaming  boy?  But,  alas!  these  were  not 
merely  Meriel's  opinions  —  it  was  her  nature. 
With  him  the  reverse  had  been  the  case.  He  was 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  consciously  face  to  face 
with  a  different  nature,  and  he  recognized  more 
poignantly  than  ever  the  hopelessness  of  the  dream 

9 


130     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

that  possessed  him,  at  once  the  hopelessness  and 
the  unreason  of  it.  For  was  he  not  asking  Meriel 
to  be  different  from  what  she  was  —  like  a  com- 
mon human  husband?  She  was  the  moon  in  the 
sky  —  he  commanded  her  to  step  down  and  be 
a  flower  in  his  little  walled  garden.  And  the 
image  admonished  him  that  all  these  last  three 
years  had  been  but  a  childish  crying  for  the 
moon. 

She  was  not  a  human  thing;  she  never  would 
be.  Wives  were  different.  If  you  wanted  little 
human  babes,  and  a  home  sweet  as  wall-flower, 
you  must  not  love  the  moon. 

And  yet  she  looked  so  human,  such  a  woman, 
was  so  tender  and  simple  at  whiles.  What  was 
she,  after  all,  but  a  child?  She  would  change. 
And,  O  God,  how  beautiful  she  was  —  and  how 
clear  was  the  flame  of  his  worship  of  that  beauty ; 
how  small  a  part  in  it  had  that  "  Little  Love " 
which  Meriel  despised.  If  only  he  might  look 
at  her  —  have  her  growing,  like  some  "  angel- 
watered  lily,"  in  his  sight  day  after  day.  Sight 
was  enough  possession. 

As  they  thus  sat  together  talking  and  musing, 
Meriel  took  her  violin  and  sent  gay  little  butter- 
flies of  sound  flitting  along  the  shore.  She  at 
least  was  happy.  When  she  had  tired  of  the 
violin,  she  turned  to  Wasteneys  very  gently: 


Meriel  explains  Herself  1 3 1 

"  Dear,  you  must  go  now.  My  mother  will  be 
waiting  for  me." 

"  That  lady  I  saw  on  the  balcony  last  night  was 
your  mother?" 

"  Yes  !  I  have  to  be  very  good  to  her  —  she 
is  blind." 

"  Blind  !  "  —  and  in  the  exclamation  Wasteneys 
put  his  sympathy  and  his  recognition  of  the 
paradox  which  made  Meriel  human  at  this  one 
point. 

"Yes  !  be  kind  —  to  her,"  he  added. 

"  She  needs  me  so,"  said  Meriel.  There  were 
some  human  needs  that  even  Meriel  regarded. 
To  his  need  of  her  she  gave  no  thought. 

"To-morrow?"  said  Wasteneys,  as  she  rose 
and  placed  her  violin  in  its  case. 

"No,"  said  Meriel.  "I  cannot.  We  have 
seen  each  other.  To-morrow  would  be  merely 
repetition." 

Wasteneys'  heart  ached,  and  a  certain  dim  sense 
of  rebellion  stirred  within  him. 

"  What  if  I  should  disobey?  "  he  said. 

"  I  should  hate  you  "  she  answered  very  quietly. 


CHAPTER    XIX 

THE   MAN   FROM   FAIRYLAND 

WASTENEYS  returning  to  London  was 
the  Man  from  Fairyland.  In  spite  of 
all  the  complexity  of  his  feelings,  the 
sum  of  him  was  one  happy  thought.  He  had 
seen  Meriel  once  more.  His  face  shone  with 
it  —  it  almost  seemed  to  him  that  his  joy  must 
cling  to  him  like  a  discovering  perfume,  that 
passers-by  must  point  him  out  in  the  street. 
London  seemed  strange  and  unreal,  and  all  the 
roar  of  its  traffic  went  by  like  a  sound  heard  in 
a  dream.  As  he  walked  along  the  streets,  a  door 
kept  softly  opening  in  the  traffic,  and  there  was 
that  calm  little  haven,  bathed  in  all  blessing  and 
all  peace. 

The  morning  after  his  return,  towards  noon,  he 
was  walking  along  Piccadilly,  which  was  fresh 
and  gay  as  only  London  can  look  in  the  May 
sunshine.  He  noticed  little  and  smiled  to  him- 
self as  he  went  along.  Presently  his  attention 
was  caught  by  a  lady  in  a  hansom  who  was  wav- 
ing her  parasol  to  him.  She  was  a  very  pretty 


The  Man  from  Fairyland         133 

lady,  and  looked  all  the  prettier  in  her  fresh 
spring  gown. 

''Why!"  said  Wasteneys  with  an  inner  laugh, 
"it 's  Mrs.  Mendoza!" 

He  gave  her  his  best  smile  as  he  bowed,  and 
was  for  passing  on,  but  she  stopped  the  hansom, 
and  leaning  out,  said: 

"Won't  you  drive  with  me  a  little  way?  It  is 
years  since  we  met  —  you  faithless  boy." 

Really  she  was  very  pretty,  and  Wasteneys  had 
been  half  consciously  feeling  the  need  of  some 
not  too  serious  companion  to  whom  he  could 
talk  and  talk  —  and  yet  tell  them  nothing. 

"You  are  looking  very  happy,"  she  said,  as  he 
seated  himself  beside  her. 

"lam." 

"  Do  you  think  it  quite  polite  to  be  so  happy 
when  we  haven't  met  all  this  time?" 

"  Surely  there  is  all  the  more  reason  for  me  to 
look  happy  now  that  we  have  met." 

"  But  that  cruel  telegram,  and  not  one  word 
since." 

Wasteneys  pleaded  mysterious  family  troubles. 

"  And  you  really  have  been  faithful  to  me,  in 
spite  of  appearances  ?  " 

"  Do  you  doubt  me  ?  " 

Daffodil  was  considerately  unexacting  in  her 
demand  for  proofs.  She  lazily  took  Wasteneys' 


134     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

word;  but,  of  course,  it  was  only  seemly  to  have 
these  little  affectations  of  seriousness. 

"We  shall  still  make  life  wonderful  for  each 
other,"  said  Wasteneys  slyly. 

"Can  you  not  make  it  wonderful  for  me 
to-day?" 

"How?" 

"Take  me  to  lunch." 

"May  I?     You  are  free?" 

In  the  slight  stress  Wasteneys  laid  on  the  word 
"free"  Daffodil  detected  a  tentative  reference  to 
Mr.  Mendoza;  so  she  laughed. 

"Why  do  you  laugh?" 

"O,  nothing." 

"Tell  me." 

"  Do  you  remember  asking  me  if  I  were  Mrs. 
Daffodil  Mendoza?" 

"Yes.     What  of  that?" 

"Well,  I  am — but  you  didn't  wait  to  hear 
that  there  is  no  Mr.  Mendoza." 

"  He  is  dead  ?  "  Wasteneys  asked,  with  a  decent 
lowering  of  his  voice. 

"  Yes  —  three  years  ago. " 

They  were  both  respectfully  silent  for  a  mo- 
ment before  the  shade  of  the  late  Mr.  Mendoza. 

"Why  did  n't  you  tell  me?" 

"  You  seemed  so  relieved  that  I  was  '  Mrs. ' 
that  I  could  n't  find  it  in  my  heart  to  disappoint 


The  Man  from  Fairyland         135 

you.  And  don't  you  remember  saying  that  *  the 
worst  of  unmarried  women  was  that  they  always 
wanted  a  man  to  marry  them,  and  the  worst 
of  married  women  was  that  they  were  already 
married.'  I  couldn't  say  anything  after  that, 
could  I?" 

"  But  how  sly  of  you  not  letting  me  come  up  to 
the  door!" 

"I  should,  if  I  had  only  known  about  that 
horrid  telegram." 

"Ah,  you  see!  I  might  n't  have  sent  it  then." 

There  was  really  a  great  comfort  in  Daffodil's 
simple  materialism.  As  they  presently  sat  at 
luncheon  on  a  gay  balcony  overlooking  the 
Thames,  merely  to  look  across  at  her  soothed  his 
brain.  She  was  just  woman  — unindividualized: 
as  one  might  say  "a  bunch  of  flowers,"  yet  not 
think  it  necessary  to  say  what  flowers  they  were. 
She  was  really  very  beautiful  too,  and  quite  a 
good-hearted,  loving  creature.  As  he  looked  at 
her,  Wasteneys  wondered  if  the  men  were  not 
wisest  who  chose  wives  of  the  simple  flower-like 
pattern,  women  who  made  no  fantastic  demands 
upon  one's  heart  or  brain,  wives  indeed  of  an 
Eastern  pattern,  child-women,  asking  only  sun- 
shine and  sweetmeats  and  pretty  things  to  wear, 
creatures  of  butterfly  joy  and  April  sorrow. 


136     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

The  Jews,  profound  students  of  women,  declared 
that  women  had  no  souls,  and,  as  Wasteneys  sat 
with  Daffodil  drinking  wine  in  the  sun,  he  felt 
that  the  theory  was  true  of  most  women,  the 
women  perhaps  who  were  happiest  and  made 
most  men  most  happy.  But  alas !  there  were  also 
women  who  were  in  a  painful  process  of  evolu- 
tion —  the  women  who  were  developing  souls  !  — 
and  really  threatened  to  go  far  beyond  man  in  the 
process. 

Meriel. 


CHAPTER   XX 

AN   OLD   LOVE-DOCTOR 

IT  was  an  old  habit  of  Wasteneys  to  read  in 
bed,  particularly  in  the  early  morning,  and 
his  shelf  of  carefully  selected  bed-books  was, 
so  to  say,  a  microcosm  of  his  larger  library.  All 
his  tastes  were  represented,  and  thus  the  concen- 
trated eclecticism  of  the  little  collection  provided 
many  sharp,  even  quaint,  contrasts,  such  as  are 
more  or  less  lost  sight  of  in  a  larger  collection. 
Perhaps  some  of  the  more  classical  books  were 
there  in  reminiscence  of  the  imitative  taste  of  a 
grave  reverential  youth.  He  could  not  truthfully 
have  said  that  the  "Imitation  of  Christ"  has  ever 
meant  to  him  what  it  seems  to  have  meant  to 
many  others;  nor,  to  take  a  very  different  book, 
which  stood  next  to  it,  had  he  ever  been  able  to 
read  right  through  the  merry  —  monotonous  — 
tales  of  Boccaccio.  After  the  first  few  personal 
chapters,  he  had  found  the  "  Confessions  of  St. 
Augustine  "  ceasing  to  hold  him.  Nor  had  he 
long  remained  under  the  spell  of  these  selections 
from  Confucius.  "The  Pilgrim's  Progress"  had 


138     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

recently  been  added,  under  circumstances  with 
which  the  reader  is  acquainted,  but,  after  that 
first  momentous  dip  into  its  pages,  he  had  found 
no  more  messages.  But  there  was  a  Theocritus 
of  which  he  never  tired,  and  a  volume  of  Lamb, 
an  "Opium-Eater,"  and,  of  course,  a  Shakespeare. 
Then  there  was  an  Apuleius,  and  a  Montaigne, 
a  "Tom  Jones,"  a  "Trois  Mousquetaires,"  and 
"The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth."  There  were, 
too,  a  Bible  and  a  Burns,  a  Keats  and  Byron's 
"Don  Juan."  There  was  a  Shelley  and  a  Rabe- 
lais. Of  recent  books  there  was  a  "Richard 
Feverel,"  a  "Marius,"  a  Walt  Whitman,  and 
Stevenson's  "Underwoods."  And  there  was 
some  of  the  most  delicate  verse  and  prose  from 
France. 

Among  the  books  which  were  there,  as  I  have 
said,  rather  in  obedience  to  traditional  taste  than 
to  his  own,  was  Burton's  "Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly." Burton  is  quite  worth  having  for  his 
own  sake  —  there  is  no  other  such  fascinating 
rag-bag  in  literature  —  but,  of  course,  most  of  us 
bought  our  folios,  in  the  first  instance,  to  please 
Lamb.  At  all  events,  Wasteneys  had  done  so, 
and  he  had  to  confess  that  his  "Anatomy  of 
Melancholy  "  had  been  upon  his  shelves  for  some- 
thing like  ten  years,  without  his  making  more 
than  an  occasional  dip  into  those  yellow  pages 


An  Old  Love-Doctor  139 

of  strange  tessellated  learning.  So  books  bide 
their  time.  For  years  they  remain  dry  and  life- 
less for  us,  and  then  suddenly,  in  an  accidental 
sunbeam,  they  are  blossoming  like  Aaron's  rod. 
It  was  literally  owing  to  the  accident  of  an  early 
sunbeam  momentarily  lighting  up  the  old  leather 
—  as  though  a  golden  finger  was  pointing  out 
the  neglected  volume  —  that  Wasteneys  one  early 
morning,  soon  after  his  return  from  Meriel,  took 
down  his  "  Anatomy,"  and  lighted  on  the  section 
which  treats  of  Love-Melancholy,  with  such  an 
odd  mixture  of  grotesque  learning,  legendary 
illustration,  dry  humor,  and  no  little  common- 
sense. 

Love-Melancholy:  its  causes,  its  symptoms, 
its  cures.  Alas!  it  was  his  very  subject.  He 
read  of  Love's  surprising  power  and  extent,  how 
the  very  minerals  were  not  safe  from  its  influ- 
ence. He  read  of  a  peacock  in  Leucadia  that 
had  loved  a  maid,  and  of  a  crane  in  Majorca  that 
had  loved  a  Spaniard,  of  fishes  that  had  pined 
away  and  waxed  lean  for  love  —  "if  Gomesius's 
authority  be  taken. "  He  read  of  two  palm-trees 
in  Italy,  the  male  growing  at  Brundisium,  the 
female  at  Otranto,  which  remained  barren  till  at 
last  they  grew  high  enough  to  see  each  other, 
"though  many  stadiums  asunder."  Such  "fury" 
even  is  there  "  in  vegetals  "  ! 


140     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

He  read  happy.fairy  tales  of  true  love,  as  how 
"Rhodope,  the  fairest  Lady  in  her  days  in  all 
Egypt,  went  to  wash  her,  and  by  chance  (her 
maids  meanwhile  looking  but  carelessly  to  her 
clothes)  an  eagle  stole  away  one  of  her  shoes, 
and  laid  it  in  Psammetichus  the  King  of  Egypt's 
lap  at  Memphis;  he  wondered  at  the  excellency 
of  the  shoe,  and  pretty  foot,  but  more  aquila 
factum,  at  the  manner  of  the  bringing  of  it,  and 
caused  forthwith  proclamation  to  be  made,  that 
she  that  owned  that  shoe  should  come  presently 
to  his  Court;  the  Virgin  came,  and  was  forthwith 
married  to  the  King." 

Then  sprigs  of  old  verses  set  here  and  there, 
with  such  a  freshness  of  contrast  among  all  the 
crabbed  learning,  stirred  his  heart  like  the  smell 
of  gillyflowers : 

"  The  silly  wren,  the  titmouse  also, 
The  little  redbreast  have  their  election, 
They  fly  I  saw  and  together  gone, 
Whereas  hem  list,  about  environ, 
As  they  of  kinde  have  inclination, 
And  as  nature  impress  and  guide, 
Of  everything  list  to  provide." 

He  read  old  stories  of  love's  extremity:  How 
"Stratocles  the  Physician,  upon  his  Wedding 
day,  when  he  was  at  dinner,  could  not  eat  his 
meat  for  kissing  the  Bride";  how  "the  Sultan  of 


An  Old  Love-Doctor  141 

Sana's  wife  in  Arabia,  because  Vertomannus  was 
fair  and  white,  could  not  look  off  him,  from  Sun- 
rising  to  Sun-setting  she  could  not  desist  ";  how 
"Galeatus  of  Mantua  .  .  .  when  he  was  almost 
mad  for  love  of  a  fair  Maid  in  the  City,  she,  to 
try  him,  belike,  what  he  would  do  for  her  sake, 
bade  him,  in  jest,  leap  into  the  River  Po,  if  he 
loved  her;  he  forthwith  did  leap  headlong  off  the 
bridge,  and  was  drowned " ;  how  "  Another  at 
Ficinum  in  like  passion,  when  his  Mistress  by 
chance  (thinking  no  harm  I  dare  swear)  bade  him 
go  hang,  the  next  night  at  her  doors  hanged  him- 
self " ;  how  some  have  taken  a  journey  to  Japan, 
for  their  love's  sake;  and  how  others  have  kept 
silence  a  whole  twelvemonth,  in  obedience  to 
their  mistress's  command.  And  many  more  like 
marvels. 

He  read  with  tears  the  laments  of  old  lovers, 
such  as  this  of  Philostratus :  "I  am  ready  to  die, 
Sweetheart,  if  it  be  thy  will;  allay  his  thirst 
whom  thy  star  has  scorched  and  undone; 
the  fountains  and  rivers  deny  no  man  drink 
that  comes;  the  fountain  doth  not  say,  thou 
shalt  not  drink,  nor  the  apple,  thou  shalt  not 
eat,  nor  the  fair  meadow,  walk  not  in  me,  but 
thou  alone  wilt  not  let  me  come  near  thee,  or 
see  thee;  contemned  and  despised,  I  die  for 
grief." 


142     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

He  read,  too,  .of  that  "honest  Country -fellow 
(as  Fulgosus  relates  it)  in  the  Kingdom  of 
Naples,  at  plough  by  the  sea  side,  saw  his  wife 
carried  away  by  Mauritanian  Pirates,  he  ran  after 
in  all  haste,  up  to  the  chin  first,  and  when  he 
could  wade  no  longer,  swam,  calling  to  the  Gov- 
ernor of  the  ship  to  deliver  his  wife,  or  if  he 
must  not  have  her  restored,  to  let  him  follow  as 
a  prisoner,  for  he  was  resolved  to  be  a  Galley- 
slave,  his  drudge,  willing  to  endure  any  misery, 
so  that  he  might  but  enjoy  his  dear  wife.  The 
Moors,  seeing  the  man's  constancy,  and  relating 
the  whole  matter  to  their  Governor  at  Tunis, 
set  them  both  free,  and  gave  them  an  honest 
pension  to  maintain  themselves  during  their 
lives." 

But  it  was  to  the  chapter  on  the  "  Cure  of 
Love-Melancholy  "  that  he  turned  with  a  mock- 
serious  eagerness.  Was  there  any  help  in  this 
absurd  old  book  for  a  modern  mind  diseased  ? 
Many  lovers,  he  read,  had  found  great  benefit 
from  eating  "  Cowcumber,  Melons,  Purselan, 
Water-Li  lies,  Rue,  Woodbine,  Ammi,  and  Let- 
tice" — lettuce  being  specially  recommended  both 
by  Lemnius  and  Mizaldus.  Alas !  his  love  was 
not  of  the  kind  to  be  allayed  by  cooling  herbs. 
He  must  seek  another  cure.  He  read  how  Ama- 
tus  Lusitanus  cured  a  young  Jew  that  was  almost 


An  Old  Love-Doctor  143 

mad  for  love,  with  the  syrup  of  Hellebore;  and 
how  highly  Avicenna  thought  of  blood-letting. 
He  read  of  Leucata  Petra,  "  that  renowned  rock 
in  Greece,  of  which  Strabo  writes," — '"from 
which  if  any  Lover  fling  himself  down  headlong, 
he  was  instantly  cured ! "  The  ironical  old 
scholar!  So  one  might  urge  decapitation  as  an 
unfailing  cure  for  toothache.  He  read,  too,  that 
"amongst  the  Cyziceni,  there  is  a  well  conse- 
crated to  Cupid,  of  which  if  any  lover 
taste,  his  passion  is  mitigated  " ;  also  he  read 
of  the  river  Selemnus,  in  Greece,  which  pos- 
sessed like  properties  —  "by  reason  of  the 
extreme  coldness  belike,"  adds  the  satirical 
rogue. 

If  these  and  such  other  cures  failed,  there 
were  but  two  others  to  try.  The  first,  strongly 
recommended  by  Avicenna,  is  —  ut  amanti  cedat 
amatum  —  that  the  lover  be  granted  his  desire ! 
Arculanus  is  of  the  same  opinion,  and  Burton 
agrees  that  ^Esculapius  himself  cannot  in- 
vent a  better  remedy.  This,  however,  being  a 
remedy  not  always  within  reach  of  unhappy 
lovers,  Burton  gives  them  this  parting  advice 
—  that  they  "  wisely  and  warily  tmwind  them- 
selves. " 

When  Wasteneys  came  to  that,  he  put  the  book 
down  with  a  smile  and  a  sigh.  The  old  book  had 


144     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

delivered  its  message.  It  had  given  him  a  new 
idea.  Why  not  try  —  wisely  and  warily  to  un- 
wind himself?  The  thought  occupied  him  all 
day,  and  there  was  a  curious  smile  on  his  face  — 
a  fighting  smile,  one  might  say. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

IN  WHICH   WASTENEYS   COUNTS   UP  HIS   FORCES 

WISELY  and  warily  to  unwind  himself! 
Excellent  advice  !  But  how  shall  one 
put  it  into  practice !  Ah !  it  is  not  so 
easy,  old  Dryasdust,  living  among  the  bookish 
shadows  of  human  passions,  as  a  botanist  among 
dried  flowers.  This  shrivelled,  yellowing  "  speci- 
men "  —  do  you  imagine  that  this  is  the  rose? 
Have  you  never  seen  it  in  the  morning  with  the 
dew  on  it?  Ah!  what  a  perfume  it  had,  what  a 
glory !  and  how  the  young  heads  would  go  dizzy 
with  the  smell  of  it.  It  is  easy  enough  to  resist 
it  now,  as  it  lies  here  pressed  in  your  worm-eaten 
folio. 

Easy  to  say,  old  man,  but  do  you  know  what 
you  are  saying?  O,  it  is  to  fight  against  all  the 
sweetness  of  the  world,  to  make  yourself  the  enemy 
of  the  very  sweetest  thing.  To  take  your  heart's 
desire  by  the  throat,  and  strangle  it  slowly  day  by 
day.  To  long,  till  your  heart  almost  breaks,  for  the 
sound  of  one  voice,  and  yet  to  say :  I  will  never 
hear  it  again  —  I  desire  to  hear  it  no  longer  —  I 

10 


146     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

should  hate  to  hear  it  again  —  it  means  nothing  to 
me  now ;  and  then,  suddenly,  at  some  chance  echo 
of  it  in  your  thought,  to  feel  your  whole  will  melt 
away  and  your  whole  soul  crying  like  a  child  for 
its  home  —  and  all  the  fighting  to  be  done  over 
again ! 

Yet,  of  course,  the  old  man  is  right.  If  it  can 
only  be  done ! 

To  fight  one's  way  out  of  a  dream.  To  plot  an 
escape  from  one's  joy.  To  find  entirely  new  reasons 
for  living,  new  incentives,  new  rewards.  Literally 
to  begin  one's  life  again.  No  one  can  imagine  that 
a  light  task.  Yet  to  have  conceived  the  bare  idea 
of  such  a  deliberate  struggle  was  something  —  per- 
haps a  great  deal.  Before  Wasteneys'  eyes  had 
fallen  upon  that  old  love-doctor's  wisdom,  the  mere 
idea  of  such  a  change  in  him  would  have  seemed 
wild  and  unnatural.  He  had  never  thought  of  dis- 
puting the  instinctive,  rather  boyish,  transcenden- 
talism which  had  told  him  that  in  Meriel,  for  good 
or  ill,  he  had  found  the  final  reason  of  his  life ;  that 
outside  her  his  life  could  have  neither  purpose  nor 
joy,  and  that,  losing  her,  he  must  inevitably  lose 
himself.  He  had  been  accustomed  to  regard  his 
love  for  her  as  a  part  of  the  mysterious,  changeless 
order  of  things,  an  inviolable  and  sacred  affinity. 
But  he  must  now  ask  himself  if,  after  all,  this  had 
not  been  a  fancy,  a  fancy  somewhat  wilfully  and 


Wasteneys  counts  Forces          147 

wastefully  indulged.  He  must  now  ask  himself  if 
life  had  not  other  purposes  more  serious  and  im- 
perative for  him  —  purposes  in  which  this  love  had 
been  but  a  passing  shaping  process,  and  purposes 
his  fulfilment  of  which  would  in  the  end  bring  him 
satisfaction  to  which  his  love  for  Meriel  would  seem 
a  toy. 

"  O,  Meriel !  Meriel !  From  to-day  I  must  be 
your  enemy.  My  heart  must  take  up  arms  against 
itself." 

But  where  were  his  weapons?  What  motive 
impulses  had  he  to  draw  him  from  her,  to  range 
against  the  one  imperious  impulse  that,  with  the 
force  of  gravitation,  drew  him  to  her  night  and 
day? 

He  sighed.  It  almost  seemed  that  he  had  none. 
Yet,  without  knowing  it,  he  was  already  stronger 
than  he  thought  —  by  a  vague  unformulated  rest- 
lessness and  rebellion  in  his  soul.  He  had  already 
conceived  of  escape,  though  it  had  been  but  an 
accidental  thought  full  of  pain  —  yet  soon  he  would 
desire  to  escape.  Then  he  would  determine.  Then, 
perhaps  —  by  good  fortune  !  —  he  would  actually 
escape. 

Meanwhile,  he  whimsically  counted  up  his  forces, 
drawing  them  upon  paper  in  order  of  battle.  On 
one  side  was  that  shining  embattled  name  (O,  face 
like  a  rose  in  armor !) 


148      The  Love- Letters  of  the  King 

'MERIEL, 

on  the  other  himself,  assisted  by : 

(1)  Religion.     (Who  knows?) 

(2)  Humor.     (No  use!) 

(3)  Another  love.    (Impossible  —  and  yet ) 

(4)  Pride.     (Nonsense!) 

(5)  Distraction.     (A  failure.) 

(6)  Anger.     (Mere  talk!) 

(7)  Literature.     (Absurd  —  and  yet,  why  not?) 

As  he  thus  reviewed  his  spiritual  army,  it  pre- 
sented but  a  sorry  appearance  to  his  mind.  He 
knew  too  well  that  the  whole  cowardly  host  would 
take  flight  with  one  glance  of  Meriel's  eyes.  She 
had  but  to  call  his  name,  and  the  commander-in- 
chief  would  run  to  her,  eager  to  throw  down  his 
arms. 

All  the  same,  that  vague  rebellion  did  not  cease 
to  stir  within  him ;  and  those  old  words  continued 
to  work  in  his  mind.  Wisely  and  warily  to  unwind 
himself! 

Meanwhile,  he  would  try  the  drug  distraction 
once  more;  which  meant,  though  he  was  not 
aware  of  it,  that  he  would  play  a  little  longer  — 
till  the  reinforcements  came  up. 


CHAPTER   XXII 

MYRTLE  ROME 

DISTRACTION  meant  nothing  more  dan- 
gerous than  Daffodil  Mendoza,  and  the 
renewal  of  a  long-standing  picturesque 
flirtation  with  Myrtle  Rome.  Myrtle  Rome  was 
one  of  those  beautiful  women  that  are  flowers 
thrown  up  by  a  decaying  adulterous  aristocracy. 
The  active  forcible  vices  of  her,  at  first  sight, 
incongruous  ancestors,  and  in  fact  quite  near 
progenitors,  had  blossomed  in  her  in  a  decor- 
ative romanticism.  Through  the  medium  of 
poetry  and  music  and  strange  art,  she  played  with 
sins  which  her  family  had  taken  more  seriously, 
sins  for  which  she  herself  had  no  gifts  —  merely 
a  literary  inclination.  She  was  pretty,  with  a 
strangely  fresh  and  innocent  beauty,  and  she  had 
a  girlish  na'ivetf  of  manner  which  masked  the  most 
eager  vanity,  and  the  hardest  of  young  hearts. 
She  said  daring  things,  but  had  never  been  known 
to  do  any.  Myrtle  had  no  senses  beyond  what  she 
could  satisfy  in  a  keen  and  very  cultivated  passion 
for  the  orchids  of  modern  art. 


150     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

Yet,  withal,  she  was  a  fascinating  young  creature 
—  so  long  as  one  did  not  take  her  too  seriously. 
Beautiful,  exquisitely  cultivated  and  very  clever, 
she  was  a  delicious  human  flower. 

Her  mother  had  been,  and  indeed  still  was,  a 
famous  beauty,  the  heroine  of  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  scandals  of  the  period,  and  for  her 
Wasteneys  felt  that  respect  which  he  always  paid 
to  sincerity.  She  had  done  what  her  daughter 
only  dreamed  of.  The  signatures  of  many  passions 
were  written  upon  her  still  beautiful  face.  Her 
daughter  was  merely  a  flowery  shadow  of  her  fiery 
mother.  "  It  is  your  mother  whom  I  really  love," 
Wasteneys  said  one  day  to  Myrtle,  "  the  shadow  of 
her  in  you.  She  has  understood  that  the  true 
romance  is  reality.  You  will  never  know  romance 
because  you  are  always  seeking  it.  Real  romance 
never  thinks  of  itself  by  that  name  —  any  more 
than  a  hero  would  think  of  calling  himself  a  hero, 
or  a  saint  be  conscious  of  his  halo." 

They  were  sitting  in  a  shaded  corner  of  the 
garden  at  Myrtle's  country  home  —  where  Waste- 
neys was  spending  a  few  summer  days,  as  one  of  a 
little  house-party  —  and  Myrtle,  who  had  quite  a 
society  reputation  for  her  silver-points,  was  making 
a  sketch  of  Wasteneys'  head. 

"  Don't  look  so  grim,"  she  said ;  "  you  look  like 
John  Knox  lecturing  Queen  Mary.  Please  look 


Myrtle  Rome  151 

happy  again.  Do  you  always  look  so  unhappy 
when  you  talk  of  romance?  I'm  afraid  it's  no 
use  asking  so  serious  a  person  to  join  my  new 
club." 

"What  is  that?"  asked  Wasteneys. 

"  It  is  called  the  Romantics.  The  members  are 
to  wear  in  secret  a  silver  rose,  and  are  to  recognize 
each  other  by  the  blowing  of  a  silver  whistle. 
Representatives  of  all  forms  of  romance  are  ad- 
mitted to  membership,  the  romance  of  daily  life 
alone  excepted.  A  sort  of  new  Collegia  d  'Amore 
—  you  know." 

"  I  see,"  said  Wasteneys ;  "  we  should  discourse 
on  the  divinity  of  love,  and  the  best  way  of  knot- 
ting your  lady's  shoe  tie,  so  that  it  cannot  possibly 
come  untied  six  times  in  one  walk,  and  kindred 
subjects.  Is  that  the  sort  of  thing?" 

"  Just  my  idea." 

"  It  might  be  amusing,"  said  Wasteneys,  think- 
ing of  the  drug  distraction ;  "  suppose  you  all  come 
down  to  Wasteneys  for  a  week?  The  old  place  is 
lonely,  and  would  be  glad  of  some  young  faces." 

"  Now  you  're  quite  a  dear  again  !  "  said  Myrtle. 
"  I  should  just  love  it." 

"  All  right  then,  let's  do  it;  and,  when  we  are 
tired  of  the  divinity  of  love,  we  can  dress  up  and 
play  lutes  on  the  lake  and  row  in  the  moonshine, 
and  perhaps  we  can  get  Yaffle  to  raise  the  devil !  " 


152      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

Yaffle  was  a  charming  young  "  kabbalistic  "  poet 
known  to  both  of  them. 

"  Better  and  better.     Oh,  will  you  do  it?  " 

"  Certainly,"  said  Wasteneys,  whimsically  pur- 
suing the  idea,  not  without  irony,  "  and  we  might 
produce  a  play  exactly  in  the  old  way  —  without 
scenery,  of  course,  and  almost  without  actors  !  A 
real  Celtic  play  —  and  we  '11  pronounce  our  lines 
as  nearly  as  possible  like  the  bards  of  the  ninth 
century." 

"  How  perfectly  romantic  !  "  exclaimed  Myrtle, 
clapping  her  hands. 

"  And,  of  course,  we  '11  crown  the  most  beautiful 
woman,  and  carry  her  in  a  litter  of  sweet-smelling 
wood;  and,  who  knows?  perhaps  some  of  us  may 
find  romance  !  But  we  must  take  care  to  ask  no 
dull  people.  Only  beautiful,  serious  people,  with 
entertaining  bees  in  their  bonnets  —  who  can  dance 
and  flirt  as  well.  And  we  must  have  one  really 
amusing  man,  a  man  who  makes  one  laugh —  and 
yet,  curiously  enough,  never  makes  an  epigram. 
And  some  of  us  —  perhaps  during  the  Celtic  play 
—  shall  play  at  tin  soldiers,  like  one  poet,  and 
some  of  us  sail  paper-boats  on  the  lake,  like  an- 
other   " 

Myrtle  put  down  her  sketch,  so  taken  was  she 
with  this  new  serious  frivolity.  "  Let 's  make  out 
a  list  of  people  at  once,"  she  said. 


Myrtle  Rome  153 

By  the  time  they  had  settled  the  list  to  their 
satisfaction,  the  long  shadows  were  beginning  to 
stretch  across  the  grass.  The  little  collaboration, 
frivolous  as  it  was,  had  stirred  up  memories  of  an 
old  May-time,  none  the  less  sweet  because  it  had 
failed  to  keep  its  promise.  Looking  towards  the 
sun-dial  that  stood  near  them,  Myrtle  said,  her 
musical  voice  purposely  wistful  with  reminiscence : 
"  I  wonder  what  time  it  is  at  Aleppo." 

It  was  one  of  those  old  dials  which  tells  you  the 
time,  not  only  in  your  garden,  but  at  Bagdad  and 
at  Constantinople,  and  Pekin,  and  many  another 
old  market  of  the  world,  and  it  had  been  one  of 
Myrtle's  fancies  that  their  time  should  be  reckoned 
from  Aleppo.  It  sounded  like  the  Arabian  Nights  ! 

Wasteneys  smiled  sympathetically,  and  he  was 
not  insensible  to  the  charm  of  her  fragrant  youth. 

"  Ah !  we  almost  loved  each  other,  did  n't  we, 
Myrtle?" 

"You  never  understood  how  much  I  loved  you," 
said  Myrtle,  really  half  in  earnest.  In  that  summer 
afternoon  light  any  one  else  would  have  believed 
her. 

"  Little  Myrtle,"  he  said  gently,  "  what  a  pity 
you  are  so  romantic !  " 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

UNEXPECTED   HAPPINESS   FOR  ADELINE   WOOD 

IN  that  marshalling  of  his  forces  Wasteneys 
had  necessarily  not  counted  two  allies  —  for 
how  could  he  know  that,  morning  and  night, 
Father  Selden  and  Adeline  Wood  named  him  very 
tenderly  and  appealingly  in  their  prayers?  Had 
he  known,  touched  as,  of  course,  he  would  have 
been,  he  might  hardly  have  counted  the  prayer  of 
another  as  a  serious  energy.  For  his  rationalism 
still  clung  to  him,  in  spite  of  his  irrational  posses- 
sion. Yet,  if  Meriel  could  call  to  him  across  space 
and  be  heard,  was  it  impossible  to  believe  that  the 
love  of  two  friends  might  also  project  itself,  if  not 
indeed  as  a  forcible  pleading  at  the  throne  of  God, 
still  as  a  bracing  sustaining  wave  of  spiritual  influ- 
ence ?  If —  as,  of  course,  is  common  experience  — 
friends  can  strengthen  each  other  as  they  talk 
together,  the  prayerful  longing  of  one  to  help  the 
other  charging  that  other  with  a  new  vitality  of 
determination  or  hope,  and  if,  as  will  hardly  be 
denied,  the  help  then  given  has  little  to  do  with 
the  spoken  wisdom,  but  is  mainly  the  mysterious 


Happiness  for  Adeline  Wood      155 

passing  of  power  from  one  to  the  other  by  the  ethe- 
real vibration  of  love ;  may  we  not  hope  that  the 
currents  of  love  are  uninterrupted  by  distance,  and 
that  it  is  possible  for  one  friend  to  send  waves  of  help 
to  another,  however  separated  by  space  and  time  ? 
The  power  of  what  we  call  prayer  is  partly  that, 
and  those  who  have  entered  into  the  secrets  of  the 
soul  know  that,  just  as  we  may  save  a  friend  from 
drowning  by  the  energy  of  our  straining  arms,  so 
we  may  sustain  him  in  moments  of  spiritual  peril  by 
the  energy  of  our  resolute  prayers.  There  may  be 
still  more  mysterious  efficacy  in  prayer,  but  surely 
that  there  is ;  and  often,  perhaps,  when  Wasteneys 
felt  a  new  strength  in  him,  it  was  some  prayer  of 
Father  Selden's  or  Adeline  Wood's  that  had  just 
reached  him  after  its  journey  through  the  air. 

Day  after  day,  night  after  night,  in  the  solitude 
of  Wasteneys,  Father  Selden  prayed  for  his  son. 
Life  was  so  simple  there,  so  relieved  from  merely 
material  preoccupations,  that  an  old  man  might, 
undisturbed,  spend  all  his  remaining  energies  in 
prayer  —  as  some  poets  are  privileged  to  spend 
their  lives  in  the  contemplation  and  expression  of 
their  vision  of  the  world.  Blessed  privilege  —  be- 
yond the  privilege  of  poets  —  to  devote  one's  life 
to  the  divine  art  of  prayer  ! 

His  life  was  growing  near  to  its  end.  If  he 
might  only  see  his  son,  the  son  of  his  old  dear 


156     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

friend,  safe  within'  the  arms  of  the  Divine  Love,  the 
love  that  went  seeking  him  so  patiently,  so  ten- 
derly, through  the  years :  then  the  old  man  could 
cheerfully  sing  his  Nunc  dimittis. 

When  he  heard  from  Wasteneys  that  the  sad 
old  home  was  once  more  to  be  filled  with  young 
voices,  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  prayer  had  come 
a  step  nearer  to  fulfilment.  For,  as  he  said  to  him- 
self: "  Man  comes  back  to  God  with  cheerfulness, 
with  laughter  and  singing."  The  clouds  of  obscur- 
ing sorrow  were  passing,  and  the  beams  of  the 
divine  joy  were  breaking  through.  Wasteneys  in- 
deed had  not  thought  of  the  visit  of  the  Romantics 
to  Wasteneys  in  that  way;  but  perhaps  the  old 
Father  was  right,  after  all.  The  soul  steals  back 
to  God  in  many  shamefaced  disguises,  in  frivolous 
masques,  and  idle  dances.  Then  suddenly  it  falls 
upon  its  knees ! 

Adeline's  prayers  were  less  definitely  theo- 
logical ;  for  prayer  with  her  was  rather  the  sur- 
vival of  a  girlish  habit  than  the  exercise  of  a 
living  faith.  Straightly  catechised  she  would  have 
proved,  it  is  to  be  feared,  a  sad  heretic,  but  so 
much  religious  force  had  been  stored  in  her  by  a 
religious  ancestry  that  she  went  on  praying  all 
the  same.  Had  she  known  of  Father  Selden's 
prayers,  the  last  thing  she  could  have  wished 
would  have  been  an  answer  to  them  —  for  English 


Happiness  for  Adeline  Wood      1 57 

nonconformity  was  still,  unconsciously,  a  strong 
prejudice  in  her  blood.  Her  prayer  for  Wasteneys 
was  very  simple.  "  O  help  him  to  be  good,"  she 
prayed,  "  and  give  him  his  joy." 

Give  him  his  joy  !  It  was  an  unselfish  prayer ; 
for,  though  Adeline  knew  nothing  definitely  of  his 
story,  she  knew,  particularly  after  "The  Love- 
Letters  of  the  King,"  all  a  woman  need  know. 
His  joy  she  knew  could  not  be  hers,  except  in  her 
secret  heart  —  because  it  was  his.  She  never 
allowed  herself  to  acknowledge  to  herself  that  she 
loved  Wasteneys.  When  she  had  taken  up  her 
bachelor  life,  her  attitude  had  been  —  and  partly 
no  doubt  at  the  time  sincerely  so  —  that  of  many 
modern  women,  who  profess  the  independent 
blessedness  of  the  female  unit.  As  if  woman,  born 
to  be  a  wife  and  a  mother,  could  find  a  substitute 
in  bookbinding !  Of  course,  in  her  heart  Adeline 
knew  better.  She  was  only  rational  in  self- 
defence.  She  was  ready — O!  so  ready — to  be 
a  simple  wife-woman  the  moment  she  dare  be  it  in 
safety.  If  only  the  man  she  loved  had  loved  her ! 
But  to  that  fancy,  with  the  heroic  self-repressive 
power  of  some  women,  she  gave  no  ear.  Indeed, 
as  far  as  Wasteneys  was  concerned,  it  had  hardly 
at  any  time  been  so  definite  as  a  fancy.  In  her 
vision  of  the  future  she  saw  herself  strenuously  un- 
mated,  distilling  from  life  her  own  lonely  satisfac- 


158     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

tions,  and  dependent  for  her  excitements  on  the 
reflected  joys  and  sorrows  of  others. 

The  fourth-born  of  six  sisters,  this  was  a  Spartan 
ideal  with  which  she  had  already  made  acquaint- 
ance in  girlhood.  It  is  seldom  that  six  sisters  of 
a  family  can  hope  all  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  mar- 
riage. The  attractive  fruit  on  that  tree  is  soon 
exhausted,  and,  naturally,  the  beautiful  elder  sis- 
ters—  or,  not  unlikely,  some  suddenly  maturing 
younger  sister  —  gather  the  fairest,  before  the 
others  have  any  interest  in  the  fruit  at  all.  Three 
of  Adeline's  sisters  were  already  mothers,  and 
Adeline  had  thus  approached  to  the  joys  of 
motherhood  by  the  nearness  of  an  aunt. 

One  day,  while  Wasteneys  was  planning  "  The 
Romantics  "  with  Myrtle,  Adeline  received  a  letter 
from  one  of  these  married  sisters  living  in  the 
country,  that  made  her  face  flush  with  a  happy, 
half  ashamed,  rose-color,  which  it  was  a  pity 
Wasteneys  had  not  been  there  to  see.  This  sister, 
some  twelve  months  before,  had  given  birth  to  a 
little  girl ;  and  since  then  her  health  had  been  very 
frail.  She  had  too  a  little  son  of  four.  Now  the 
doctor  had  ordered  her  away  to  the  south,  and 
she  wrote  to  know,  if,  while  she  was  away  with  her 
husband,  Adeline  would  take  care  of  her  house 
and  her  two  little  children.  Could  she  be  spared 
from  her  bookbinding  ? 


Happiness  for  Adeline  Wood      159 

If  Adeline  had  suddenly  been  whispered  that 
she  was  going  to  be  a  mother  herself,  she  could 
hardly  have  been  more  excited  than  by  this  news. 
Why !  she  would  be  almost  a  mother  —  a  sort  of 
transfigured  aunt,  at  all  events.  To  be  all  day 
long  with  little  children  —  little  fairy  children  —  to 
watch  their  minds  opening  like  flowers,  to  listen  to 
them  trying  to  talk,  like  birds  trying  to  sing.  O ! 
this  was  luck,  for  a  poor  girl  with  no  babies  of  her 
own  —  wasn't  it?  She  almost  forgot  to  be  sorry 
for  her  sister's  illness.  Her  real  thought  was  that 
she  was  going  to  be  a  mother  by  proxy !  She 
could  n't  afford  to  sigh  that  it  was  only  by  proxy. 
She  was  grateful  that  it  should  be  as  it  was. 
"  Yes  !  Yes  !  Yes  !  "  she  telegraphed  back  im- 
mediately, "  only  too  happy  !  " 

And  that  was  the  reason  why  she  could  n't 
accept  Wasteneys'  invitation  to  the  Romantics, 
which  came  five  minutes  after  she  had  sent  her 
telegram. 


CHAPTER   XXIV 

"  THE   ROMANTICS  "   AT   WASTENEYS 

BEFORE  writing  this  chapter  I  have  sought 
high  and  low  among  the  curiosity  shops, 
scanned  catalogues,  telegraphed  famous 
dealers — for  "  any  pen  used  by  Thomas  Love 
Peacock."  A  famous  lady  collector,  with  an  op- 
timism which  seldom  disappoints  one,  promises 
me  one  within  a  month.  Unfortunately,  however, 
I  cannot  wait  so  long.  I  have  already  delayed 
this  chapter  for  a  full  fortnight,  and  it  can  wait  no 
longer.  If  I  only  dared  to  ask  Peacock's  literary 
grandson  —  to  lend  me  for  one  day  the  pen  that 
wrote  "The  New  Republic"!  But  then  I  dare 
not,  though,  judging  by  his  later  books,  he  does 
not  seem  nowadays  to  have  much  use  for  it 
himself,  and,  therefore,  might  perhaps  spare  it 
me  —  if  I  only  had  the  courage  to  ask.  Well,  I 
have  n't,  so  I  must  do  the  best  I  can  with  my  own 
pen. 

The  list  of  guests  which  Myrtle  Rome  and 
Wasteneys  had  drawn  up  that  afternoon  in  the 
garden  comprised  the  following: 


"The  Romantics'*  161 

(1)  A  young  Polish  musician  who  played  upon 
a  curious  heart-shaped  violin  of  his  own  invention, 
with  a  bow  made  from  the  hair  of  the  women  who 
had  loved  him* 

(2)  A  novelist  who  vivisected  his  heart,  regard- 
less of  his  sufferings  —  for  his  own  amusement. 

(3)  A  famous  lady  faith-healer  —  who  was  also 
beautiful. 

(4)  An  illustrious  devil-worshipper,  on  a  visit 
from  Paris. 

(5)  An   esoteric    dramatist   who    said   he   was 
greater  than   Shakespeare,  and  who  found   many 
to  believe  him. 

(6)  A  poet  so  exquisitely  gifted  that  not  merely 
did  he  shrink  from  the  paper  and  print  of  custom- 
ary publication,  but  would  consent  only  to  com- 
municate his   poems  once   a  year,   in    a    musical 
whisper,  to   a  carefully-chosen   audience,  not  ex- 
ceeding twelve,  in  a  room  specially  designed  for 
the  purpose,  in  which  shape  and  color,  the  degree 
and  fall  of  the  light,  and  the  regulation  of  the  tem- 
perature, were  all  nicely  adjusted  to  the  poem  thus 
revealed.     For,  as  will  be  obvious  to  any  but  the 
coarsest  artistic   perception,  the  ear  which   is  to 
receive  the  divine  voice   must  be,  in  its  kind,  as 
exquisite  as  the  voice  itself.     Actually,  as  this  poet 
was  in  the  habit  of  maintaining,  one  really  needed 
a  different  room  for  the  revelation  of  each  poem, 

n 


1 62     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

and  a  different  audience  —  though  those  were  con- 
ditions difficult  to  compass.  The  very  complexions 
of  the  listeners  had  a  subtle  effect  on  the  revelation 
of  his  poems,  and  he  has  been  known  to  attribute 
the  failure  of  one  of  his  poems  to  the  lack  of  green 
in  the  eyes  of  the  ladies  present. 

(7)  A  young  French   painter,  who,  finding  it 
impossible  to  work  in  daylight,  had  made  a  curious 
little  habitation  for  himself  in  one  of  the  disused 
sewers  of  Paris ;   his  subterranean  salon  being  one 
of  the  most  fashionable  rallying  points  of  all  the 
advanced  movements. 

(8)  A  dandy  who  dressed  in  the  manner  of  the 
Regency,  but  was  so  witty  that  nobody  minded. 

(9)  Lady  Caroline  Wenlock.  \ 

(10)  Miss  Black. 

(11)  Mrs.  Williamson.  Beautiful 

(12)  and  (13)   The  Misses  Waters.      women' 
(14)    Miss  Knowles.  / 

Myrtle  Rome  and  Wasteneys  completed  the 
company. 

The  contributions  of  these  sixteen  members  to 
the  seven  days'  session  of  the  club  can  be  more  or 
less  readily  imagined  from  the  brief  descriptions 
attached  to  their  names.  Lacking  the  two  pens 
I  have  referred  to,  I  shall  not  venture  on  any 
detailed  account  of  the  transactions.  Myrtle  read 
a  bright  paper:  "On  the  Influence  of  Beautiful 


"The  Romantics "  163 

Names  upon  the  Affections,"  and  Wasteneys  dis- 
coursed on  "  Recent  Improvements  in  the  Nav- 
igation of  Paper  Boats." 

But  there  were  two  papers  of  real  importance, 
which  demand  a  fuller  record.  The  first  was  a 
paper  by  the  Esoteric  Dramatist,  entitled  "  The 
Vowelization  of  the  Drama  "  ;  and  the  second  was 
a  startling  deliverance  by  the  Vivisection  Novelist, 
entitled  "  A  Possible  Duty  Towards  the  Beloved." 

The  Esoteric  Dramatist  advanced  that  the  es- 
sence of  true  drama  lay  in  the  stage  directions, 
and  that  the  drama  of  the  future  would  consist 
mainly  of  interjections  —  provided  with  explana- 
tory stage  directions.  Music  and  poetry  —  even 
painting  —  he  went  on,  had  been  reduced  to  a 
primary  symbolism  of  the  five  vowels:  "A,  noir; 
E,  blanc;  I,  rouge;  O,  bleu;  U,  vert."  Now 
the  drama  was  no  less  reducible  to  the  same 
simple  terms.  The  drama  was,  so  to  say,  the 
A-E-I-O-U  of  human  action.  Unconsciously,  no 
doubt,  the  earliest  playwrights  had  written  their 
plays  in  five  acts  —  five  acts,  five  vowels ;  no  mere 
coincidence.  Each  act  represented  a  human  cry 
under  given  circumstances  —  which  it  was  the 
business  of  the  stage  directions  to  interpret. 
Latterly,  dramatists  had  been  content  with  three 
acts,  and  here  no  doubt  he  must  seem  whimsical, 
even  flippant,  yet  he  could  not  forbear  to  note 


1 64     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

the  correspondence  between  the  last  three  vowels 
and  the  three  acts  of  the  modern  social,  seventh 
commandment,  drama. 

Act  I.  I !  (Stage  directions  of  at  least  twenty 
pages.) 

Act  II.  Oh!  (Stage  directions  of  at  least 
twenty  pages.) 

Act  III.  You!  (Stage  directions  of  at  least 
twenty  pages.) 

He  did  not,  of  course,  offer  this  as  a  serious 
illustration,  but  it  really  did  jocularize  his  seri- 
ous meaning. 

The  paper,  which  was  very  brief  and  con- 
fessedly experimental,  was  illustrated  by  a  per- 
formance of  one  of  the  Esoteric  Dramatist's  own 
plays  —  entirely  without  actors.  The  play  was 
entitled  "Why  Did  You?"  and  threw  the  audi- 
ence into  fits  of  laughter.  The  proceedings  con- 
cluded with  the  author  making  a  speech,  in  which 
(under  some  misconception  of  dissent  from  an 
entirely  delighted  audience)  he  defied  an  inatten- 
tive universe  to  prevent  his  writing  as  many  more 
plays  of  the  same  kind  as  he  had  a  mind  to ! 

Then  he  returned  to  his  normal  state  as  one  of 
the  most  charming  men  alive. 

The  Novelist's  paper  on  "A  Possible  Duty 
Towards  the  Beloved  "  was  of  so  unexpected  a 
character,  and  had  indeed,  for  a  while,  so  great 


"The  Romantics"  165 

an  influence  upon  at  least  one  of  its  hearers  that 
I  shall  give  it  more  or  less  complete.  I  should 
explain  that  it  was  more  or  less  well  known  to 
the  company  that  the  novelist  had  suffered  much 
extremity  from  love,  and  it  will  be  imagined  that 
his  paper,  therefore,  brought  with  it  a  delightful 
thrill  of  autobiography,  and  even  a  little  shudder. 
His  stern  suffering  face  plainly  showed  that  he 
was  theorizing  from  a  drama  not  yet  completed. 
He  began  by  placing  a  beautiful  little  revolver 
upon  the  table  —  merely,  of  course,  as  a  symbol, 
and  thus  proceeded : 

"The  longer  one  studies  life  the  less  one  comes 
to  value  the  reasoned  action  of  human  beings, 
and  the  more  one  comes  to  value  that  instinctive 
action  which  reason  has  so  often  (and  particularly 
during  the  last  two  centuries)  depreciated  and 
attempted  to  discredit.  When  one  really  reflects, 
can  one  say  that  any  of  the  important  actions  and 
motives  of  human  beings  are  reasonable  actions 
and  motives?  Is  our  joy,  properly  speaking, 
reasonable?  Is  our  sorrow  reasonable ?  Are  the 
duties  reasonable  to  which  we  abandon  ourselves, 
without  a  thought  of  the  tragic  self-sacrifice 
involved?  Seriously  speaking,  we  can  give  no 
good  reason  for  any  of  our  important  actions  or 
preoccupations;  for  the  primary  human  operations 
there  are  no  reasons.  Consider  the  most  impor- 


1 66     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

tant  of  all  human'  feelings  —  human  love.  Con- 
sider it  in  what  form  you  will.  Say  in  its  purest 
form:  the  love  of  a  mother  for  a  child.  What 
can  be  less  reasonable  than  an  affection  which 
entails  upon  the  mother  so  constant  and  so  wear- 
ing a  sacrifice  of  her  own  personal  comfort  and 
pleasure,  and  which  inexorably  destines  her  to  so 
pitiless  a  disillusionment?  There  may  seem  to 
be  more  reason  for  the  love  of  a  man  for  a  woman 
and  a  woman  for  a  man,  and  yet  in  its  apparent 
origin  what  could  be  less  reasonable?  A  reason- 
able love  would  be  one  which  selected  for  its 
object  a  being  whom  it  regarded  as  the  most 
beautiful  and  generally  the  most  worthy  of  her 
sex.  It  is  true  that  a  lover  loves,  because  he  is 
under  an  impression  that  such  is  the  object  of 
his  passion;  but  that  impression  is  one  that  has 
not  come  to  him  through  his  reason,  but  through 
some  other  medium  of  spiritual  apprehension, 
which  overrules  the  reason  —  the  reason  not  un- 
commonly, in  cases  of  the  strongest  passion, 
entering  its  serious  protest  in  vain.  Reason,  it 
must  be  remembered,  is  an  impersonal  standard 
of  values.  It  is  not  yours  or  mine.  It  belongs  to 
the  general  intellectual  equipment  of  mankind; 
and  its  results  are  as  little  influenced  by  indi- 
vidual preferences  as,  say,  a  barometer  is  influ- 
enced by  its  possessor's  desire  for  fair  weather. 


"  The  Romantics  "  167 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  your  reason,  and  my 
reason.  There  is  only  reason.  And,  that  being 
so,  if  love  were  reasonable,  all  the  men  in  the 
world  would  be  in  love  with  one  woman  —  that  is 
the  woman  who,  according  to  the  tests  of  reason, 
was  the  most  worthy  of  being  loved. 

"Then,  too,  if  love  were  reasonable,  would  it 
set  its  affections  upon  an  object  that  is  so  subject 
to  the  change  and  wear  of  life  as  man  and  woman ; 
subject  to  death,  and  to  an  ante-mortem  disinte- 
gration even  more  painful  to  the  eyes  of  a  lover? 

"Then,  to  leave  for  a  moment  the  considera- 
tion of  Love,  what  are  the  other  motive  forces 
of  Human  Life?  Religion,  War,  the  Desire  of 
Fame.  Is  there  any  need  to  labor  the  unreason- 
ableness of  these  powerful  and  august  influences? 
Religion  has  been,  and  rightly,  the  bitter  foe  of 
Reason  from  the  beginning.  Rightly  understood, 
Religion  is  the  Formulated  Adoration  of  the  Un- 
utterably Unreasonable,  the  Blessed  Belief  in  the 
Divinely  Incredible.  What  we  value  in  War  are 
its  superhuman,  unreasonable,  moments ;  moments 
when  men  seem  to  take  more  delight  in  giving 
their  lives  than  in  taking  the  lives  of  others  — 
moments  of  transfigured  suicide:  divine  irrespon- 
sible charges,  forlorn  last  stands  of  heroes.  Were 
War  a  reasonable  institution,  it  would  have  ceased 
two  thousand  years  ago.  And  is  war  even  so  un- 


1 68     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

reasonable  as  the  desire  for  fame?  —  the  desire  of 
one  who  despises  his  contemporaries  to  have  his 
name  upon  the  lips  of  future  fools. 

"  If  you  say  I  have  omitted  the  most  impera- 
tive of  all  human  motives  —  The  Desire  to  Live, 
merely  for  its  own  sake  —  whether  happily  or  not, 
with  Love  or  without,  with  Religion,  with  Fame, 
or  without;  surely  we  have  there  summed  up  in 
one  comprehensive  absurdity  the  radical  unrea- 
sonableness of  human  existence. 

"  What  we  call  civilization  is  the  unsuccessful 
attempt  of  the  reason  to  supplant  the  motive 
forces  of  human  life;  the  attempt,  one  might  say, 
remembering  the  old  fable,  of  the  brain  to  do 
away  with  the  very  organs  that  make  possible, 
by  their  conveyance  of  its  humble  nutrition,  its 
aristocratic  designs.  So  might  some  proud  flower 
plot  against  the  coarse  processes  going  on  at  its 
root. 

"If  this  reasoning  be  correct,  it  follows  that 
what  men  have  done  for  generations,  simply,  un- 
reasonably, has  some  deep,  essentially,  perhaps 
mysterious,  basis  for  its  being  done.  Men  have 
loved  and  prayed  and  fought  since  the  beginning ; 
and,  in  spite  of  the  long  interference  of  reason, 
they  are  loving  and  praying  and  fighting  with  not 
less,  perhaps  even  more,  vehemence  to-day  than 
ever. 


"The  Romantics"  169 

"  It  was  necessary  to  trouble  you  with  this 
general  vindication  of  the  unreasonableness  of 
all  essential  human  action,  to  prepare  you  for  a 
theory  which  will,  doubtless,  at  first  sight  seem 
a  little  startling,  though,  on  second  thoughts, 
you  will  see  that  it  is  not  so  much  a  theory  as 
a  law  deduced  from  the  very  general  immemorial 
practice  of  humanity. 

"  Since  the  world  began,  men  and  women  have 
loved  each  other  —  and  among  the  many  and  vari- 
ous manifestations  of  love  since  the  beginning  is 
one,  indeed  terrible,  yet  perhaps  not  entirely 
inexplicable  (allowing  for  the  mystery  of  the 
whole  subject),  for  which  I  would  beg  a  deeper 
consideration  than  has  perhaps  been  extended  to 
it  before:  namely  that,  as  men  and  women  have 
loved  from  the  beginning,  just  as  surely  have 
men  and  women  killed  each  other  for  love  —  and, 
in  disregard  of  religion  or  social  laws,  felt  them- 
selves justified  in  doing  so." 

At  this  point  the  novelist  paused  to  drink  a 
glass  of  water.  Involuntarily  he  caressed  his  re- 
volver, and  an  agreeable  shudder  passed  through 
his  audience. 

" And  felt  themselves  justified  in  doing  so!" 
he  repeated,  with  emphasis,  as  he  continued: 
"There  is  no  need  to  produce  historical  instances 
of  this  familiar  human  phenomenon.  They  range 


1 70     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

from  the  earliest  classics  to  the  latest  murder 
trial  of  our  day.  Only  a  week  ago  I  read  of  a 
laboring  man  who  had  murdered  his  wife  because 
he  had  discovered  her  infidelity.  He  confessed 
his  guilt,  but  entirely  without  contrition.  '  I 
would  do  it  again, '  he  said,  and  a  reporter  present 
noted  a  curious  light  as  of  a  fanatical  idealism 
upon  his  face.  '  Brute ! '  you  say,  and  '  brute  ' 
no  doubt  he  was;  but,  all  the  same,  the  scientific 
observer  may  see  in  his  action  the  working  of  an 
outraged  idealism  of  which  it  would  be  easy  to 
find  more  decorative,  but  not  more  suggestive, 
examples.  Within  recent  memory  an  American 
millionaire  murdered  his  wife's  lover  under  simi- 
lar circumstances;  and,  strange  as  it  may  seem, 
the  sympathy  of  the  court  was  with  him,  and  he 
received  but  a  slight  sentence.  '  Brute !  '  no 
doubt  again,  and  I  wish  it  to  be  understood  that 
I  arti  not  justifying  these,  or  any,  particular  in- 
stances. I  am  only  noting  examples  of  a  familiar 
human  phenomenon,  and  I  note  them  for  the  pur- 
pose of  this  general  question :  '  Allowing  that  all 
such  love-murders  as  I  have  mentioned  are  far 
from  being  worthy  illustrations  of  the  law,  do 
they  not,  nevertheless,  proceed  from  some  deep- 
seated  instinct  in  human  nature  which  tells  us 
all  —  however  "brutal,"  however  "civilized  "  — 
that  there  are  certain  offences  against  love,  cer- 


"The  Romantics"  171 

tain  spiritual  disloyalties  (of  which  the  physical 
are  but  shadows)  for  which  there  is  no  reparation 
but  that  of  death? '  " 

The  speaker  paused  again,  and  then  proceeded 
once  more  amid  the  held  breath  of  his  audience: 

"  Such  examples  as  I  have  given  must  be  taken 
in  the  same  spirit  as  we  take  the  crude  theolog- 
ical symbolism  of  savage  tribes.  We  say  that, 
uncouth  and  often  terrible  as  such  symbolism  is, 
yet  it  hints  at  a  divine  idea.  And  you  will  see 
from  this  illustration  that  it  has  been  profitable 
to  take  such  crude  examples  of  love-murder  as  I 
have  given,  rather  than  examples  more  canonized 
by  romance,  for  the  reason  that  the  human  sacri- 
fices of  a  savage  are  robuster  witnesses  to  a  divine 
presence  in  the  universe  than  the  rose-water  de- 
votions of  a  dean.  The  less  sophisticated  the 
creature  in  which  we  find  these  manifestations  of 
mysterious  things,  the  more  powerful  is  their 
witness.  Now,  as  it  is  likely  that  the  savage 
has  not  always  sacrificed  the  right  people  or  to 
the  right  gods,  so  it  must  often  have  happened 
that  the  terrible  idealism  which  we  are  consider- 
ing has  too  often  sacrificed  the  wrong  victim, 
from  the  wrong  motive.  Men,  no  doubt,  have 
murdered  their  wives  and  their  wives'  lovers 
from  a  low  sense  of  the  invasion  of  their  material 
property  —  property  which,  spiritually  speaking, 


172      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

was  never  theirs  by  any  consent  of  the  being  so 
imagined  as  their  possession.  Women  have  mur- 
dered men  from  a  like  erroneous  belief  —  on,  so 
to  say,  invalid  documents  of  the  heart.  Our 
concern  is  not  with  these  mistakes  in  the  work- 
ing of  what  appears  to  be  an  eternal  law,  but 
our  interest  is  in  the  law  itself.  Our  question 
is:  Whether  there  really  is  such  a  law,  essentially 
a  spiritual  law,  frequently  expressing  itself,  like 
other  laws,  grotesquely,  unjustly,  but  still  a  law 
having  for  its  end  some  mysterious  perfection  of 
which  we  cannot  even  dream. 

"  I  will  beg  leave  to  draw  one  last  illustration 
from  a  piece  of  literature  with  which  you  will  all 
be  familiar.  It  is  a  play  by  a  famous  Spanish 
dramatist  of  our  own  time,  which  I  may  say  that 
I  first  read  with  considerable  distaste.  The 
theme  seemed  so  crudely  barbaric.  One  felt  that 
it  was  time  for  a  serious  dramatist  to  leave  such 
themes  for  the  common  theatre.  But,  as  I  have 
since  pondered  the  play,  it  seems  to  me  that, 
whether  it  was  intentional  with  the  dramatist  or 
not  —  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  it  was  not  — 
there  is  behind  the  barbarism  of  his  dramatic 
symbols  a  spiritual  meaning  which  is  eternally 
valid  in  the  relations  of  men  and  women. 

"A  certain  Spanish  gentleman,  of  very  ancient 
and  distinguished  family,  a  man  of  noble,  of 


"The  Romantics"  173 

somewhat  stern,  character,  is  married  to  a  beauti- 
ful but  somewhat  weak  girl.  She  takes  a  lover, 
and  in  due  course  the  husband  discovers  the 
liaison.  Although  the  custom  of  his  country 
would  justify  his  putting  both  the  guilty  ones  to 
death,  he  refrains,  and  in  a  spirit,  so  to  say,  of 
stern  tenderness,  he  forgives  his  wife  —  whose 
weak  soul  is  in  a  bewilderment  'twixt  right  and 
wrong  and  craves  his  strong  direction  —  on  the 
condition  that  if  she  ever  finds  herself  tempted 
again  she  will  come  and  tell  him.  She  does  find 
herself  so  tempted,  and  in  the  moment  she  comes 
and  tells  her  husband.  On  hearing  it,  and  realiz- 
ing, one  may  suppose,  that  her  weakness  is  not 
passing,  but  permanent,  he,  with  great  gentle- 
ness, shoots  her  through  the  heart  —  calmly;  not 
merely  as  her  husband,  but  as  her  judge  and  her 
executioner.  Of  course,  it  is  terrible,  and  at 
first  one  revolts  from  it.  Yet,  as  one  ponders  the 
situation,  one  may  come  to  see  that  it  is  rather 
the  form  under  which  it  is  presented  than  the 
situation  itself  that  revolts  one.  We  have  out- 
grown the  formulae.  We  no  longer  recognize 
this  mediaeval  marital  proprietorship  in  woman. 
Allowing,  however,  for  the  provincialism  in  time 
and  space  of  the  form,  is  not  the  play  the  shadow- 
show  of  an  eternal  situation,  the  crisis  of  an  eter- 
nal issue?  If  one  imagines  the  parts  reversed, 


1 74     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

one  gets  rid  of  the  confusing  historical,  economi- 
cal features.  Let  the  man  be  the  law-breaker, 
the  woman  the  executioner.  It  is  all  one.  And 
for  the  old  childish  '  pride  of  birth  '  and  marital 
proprietorship,  let  us  substitute  a  spiritual  dig- 
nity and  a  mutual  spiritual  proprietorship  of  soul 
in  soul,  a  proprietorship  freely  given,  and  never, 
not  even  in  the  moment  of  disloyalty,  denied. 
Man  and  woman  alike  has  said :  '  I  belong  to  you 
forever  and  ever,  in  the  light  of  the  holiest  reve- 
lation of  life.  There  is  nothing  of  me  which  is 
not  yours.  If  I  give  a  hair  of  my  head  to  another, 
I  am  worthy  of  death,  and  were  I  so  to  profane 
the  law  of  our  love,  I  should  not  wish  to  live  a 
moment  after.  If  I  be  weak  and  seem  to  desire 
unworthy  life  after  this  sin,  if  I  fail  and  faint  and 
seem  to  desire  no  longer  the  high  levels  on  which 
we  walked  together,  O,  my  beloved,  be  you  my 
executioner,  and  carry  my  dead  body  in  your 
arms  to  heaven. '  ' 

One  more  brief  pause,  and  the  novelist  ended, 
somewhat  abruptly,  shaken  with  evident  emotion. 
He  had  several  more  pages  to  read,  but  he  hur- 
riedly passed  these  over,  and,  reading  only  the 
last,  thus  concluded :  "  Love  is  an  idealism,  a 
thing  of  ideal  joys  and  sorrows;  but,  in  the 
expression  of  these  ideal  joys  and  sorrows,  it 
employs  material  vessels  which  become  holy  and 


"The  Romantics"  175 

inviolable  by  that  sacred  use.  Profanation  of 
the  vessel  is  profanation  of  the  spirit.  And,  if 
love  be  allowed  physical  joy,  it  must  also  be 
meted  physical  punishment.  For  love  veritably 
operates  as  a  transubstantiation : 

"  '  I  know  not  thy  soul  from  thy  body, 
Neither  our  love  from  God.' 

The  sin  of  the  body  thus  becomes  the  sin  of  the 
soul.  Let  us  not  deceive  ourselves  in  this.  Nor 
let  us,  if  ever  the  occasion  arise,  weakly  spare 
the  body  of  the  beloved.  Let  us  do  our  stern 
duty  —  though  we  must  still  their  beating  hearts 
with  fearful  fire.  Love  lays  upon  us  many  duties. 
O,  may  he  leave  us  free  from  this  last  duty 
towards  our  Beloved." 

This  paper  produced  a  profound  sensation 
among  its  listeners,  a  sensation  to  which  the 
novelist  was  as  profoundly  indifferent,  evidently 
wrapped  in  a  bitter  dream.  He  cut  off  all  pos- 
sibility of  intrusive  discussion  by  stalking  from 
the  room,  revolver  in  hand,  on  the  conclusion  of 
his  paper.  Presently  he  was  seen  walking  across 
the  moonlit  lawn,  in  the  direction  of  the  lake. 
There  were  those  who  feared  that  he  might  never 
return. 

"  How  do  you  drag  a  lake?  "  asked  pretty  Lady 
Constance  Wenlock  of  her  companion,  with  obvi- 


1 76      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

ous  allusiveness'.  "  One  often  reads  of  it  in 
novels.  I  wonder  if  they  have  a  set  of  the 
proper  fishing  tackle,  would  you  call  it,  here  at 
Wasteneys  —  grappling  irons,  of  course,  I  mean. 
I  have  never  seen  them.  It  would  be  exceed- 
ingly interesting." 

"Is  the  lake  very  deep?"  asked  Miss  Black, 
hopefully. 

"  I  should  think  so, "  answered  Mrs.  Williamson. 

"His  hair  would  make  it  easier  to  find  him," 
said  the  Misses  Waters,  sympathetically. 

"But  I  think  he  will  shoot  himself,"  said  Miss 
Knowles;  "he  seemed  so  fond  of  that  little 
revolver." 

So  beautiful  women  talk  when  left  to  them- 
selves. 

The  novelist,  however,  was  to  prove  a  disap- 
pointment. Had  any  one  had  the  curiosity,  or 
humanity,  to  follow  him,  they  would  have  ob- 
served him  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later  coldly  cor- 
recting proofs  of  his  paper  by  the  light  of  an 
exceptionally  brilliant  moon.  He  had  read,  of 
course,  from  a  tear-stained  manuscript  —  knowing 
what  was  expected  of  him  —  but  in  his  pocket  all 
the  time  he  had  carried  the  proof  received  that 
morning  from  the  editor  of  a  fashionable  monthly 
magazine.  And  yet  his  paper  had  been  a  sincere 
utterance  all  the  same;  for,  as  Miss  Black  told 


"  The  Romantics  "  1 77 

Mrs.  Williamson  in  confidence,  it  was  well  known 
that  a  certain  actress  had  treated  him  with  a  cru- 
elty that  would  have  made  Caligula  turn  pale 
with  envy. 

Indeed,  that  proof-correcting  by  the  light  of 
the  moon  was  anything  but  what  at  first  sight  it 
may  have  seemed  to  mean.  It  was  a  last  indig- 
nity of  prosaic  irony  in  a  peculiarly  cramped  and 
inclement  career.  It  meant  only  that  the  Vivi- 
section Novelist  was  an  exquisitely  unpopular 
writer,  who,  by  the  inharmonious  conjunction  of 
an  accident  in  his  early  life  and  the  bad  taste 
of  the  public,  was  doomed  to  support  a  wife  and 
three  children  on  the  literary  proceeds  of  a  sub- 
sequent dream.  If  he  thus  corrected  proofs  in 
haste,  it  was  merely  lest  he  should  miss  the  early 
morning  post. 

The  fact  that  "  A  Possible  Duty  Towards  the 
Beloved  "  was  to  be  published  in  a  monthly  maga- 
zine must  not  be  allowed  to  obscure  its  serious 
import.  Wasteneys  was  perhaps  the  only  one 
who  divined  its  sincerity,  and  understood,  in 
some  degree,  its  dark  idealism.  Though  he  had 
never  formulated  them,  he  was  conscious,  as  he 
listened,  that  feelings  very  like  those  expressed 
by  the  novelist  had  moved  dimly  in  the  back- 
ground of  his  mind;  and  he  could  not  resist  the 
impulse  next  morning  to  confide  something  of 


178     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

his  own  story  to  -one  who,  evidently,  had  passed 
through  a  like  experience. 

The  novelist's  comment  on  his  confidence  was 
brief  and  to  the  point : 

"  You  must  either  kill  her  —  or  forget  her. 
There  is  no  other  way." 

And  presently  he  added :  "  If  you  can  forget, 
you  are  more  fortunate  than  I  am.  .  .  .  Between 
ourselves,  I  intend  to  kill.  I  am  only  waiting 
till  I  can  afford  it;  that  is,  till  I  can  leave 
my  wife  and  family  properly  provided  for.  .  .  . 
Then  ..." 

Kill,  or  forget ! 

The  words  haunted  Wasteneys  for  many  a  day. 

Kill,  or  forget !  The  novelist's  advice  plainly 
was  to  kill.  Curiously,  the  very  next  day  this 
thing  happened. 

For  years  back  every  new  possessor  of  Was- 
teneys had  understood  that  Blue-Bell  Hollow, 
for  certain  months  of  the  year,  was  the  camping- 
ground  of  the  Smith  tribe  of  gipsies.  The  visit 
of  "The  Romantics"  chanced  to  fall  during  that 
period.  Naturally,  every  one  wanted  their  for- 
tunes told  —  particularly  Myrtle.  So  the  whole 
club  repaired  in  a  body  to  the  little  colony  of 
basket-makers,  palmists,  and  poultry-thieves,  in 
Blue-Bell  Hollow. 

There  is,  happily,  no  need  to  describe  a  gipsy 


"  The  Romantics  "  179 

encampment.  In  presence  of  so  familiar  a  scene 
the  writer  may  rest  from  his  labors  and  leave  the 
reader  to  conjure  up  for  himself  Romany  pictures 
according  to  his  fancy.  Among  the  Smiths  there 
were  three  women,  variously  marked  by  weather 
and  middle-age,  who  were  credited  with  the  gift 
of  sortilege;  but  there  was  one  who  was  unmis- 
takably the  high  priestess.  She  had  a  beautiful 
worn,  eagle  face,  and  it  was  obvious  that  hers 
was  a  mind  which  merited  a  larger  sphere  of 
operation.  Nature  had  evidently  meant  her  to 
tell  the  fortunes  of  people  of  quality,  leaving 
to  the  other  augurs  the  long  and  tedious  annals 
of  the  poor.  Certainly  she  was  a  quick  reader  of 
character.  Myrtle,  at  all  events,  she  read  at  a 
glance. 

"Ah!  noble  lady,"  she  said,  "no  one  will  ever 
break  your  heart  —  though  you  will  break 
many." 

Myrtle  was  so  flattered  that  she  gave  the  seer 
half-a-crown  instantly.  Nothing  flatters  one  like 
the  imputation  of  a  hard  heart.  The  secret  ambi- 
tion of  us  all  is  to  feel  nothing  —  except  keen  joy 
in  torturing  the  feelings  of  others.  It  is  our 
misfortune  that  so  much  congenital  Christianity 
makes  the  r61e  of  Nero  so  difficult  for  the  modern 
man  or  woman.  We  feel  —  in  spite  of  the  most 
inhuman  resolutions.  How  cruel  we  would  be  — 


180     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

if   we  only  could.     Alas!    old   kindness    in    our 
blood  compels  us  to  be  kind. 

When  the  seer  approached  Wasteneys,  he  shook 
his  head. 

"  No  !  no  !  "  he  said,  "  I  know  my  doom. " 

"I  know  it  too,"  answered  the  gipsy,  with 
ready  wit;  and  in  spite  of  himself  Wasteneys 
became  interested,  because,  of  course,  he  really 
didn't  know. 

"You  may  know  it,"  added  the  gipsy,  "but  I 
could  help  you  all  the  same." 

Wasteneys  laughed,  but,  so  superstitious  had 
he  become,  that  later  on  in  the  day  he  found  him- 
self wandering,  with  aimless  aim,  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Blue-Bell  Hollow.  The  gipsy  was 
on  the  look-out. 

"I  expected  you,"  she  said. 

"  O,  nonsense !  "  said  Wasteneys. 

"As  you  will,  sir!  —  but  I  know  her  face  as 
well  as  you  know  it." 

Wasteneys  started. 

"I  could  show  it  you  this  minute,"  she  added. 

"Show  it  me  then,"  he  said,  half  in  earnest. 

"  Will  you  walk  with  me  a  little  way  to  a  more 
quiet  place  ? " 

They  came  to  a  bend  of   the  little   stream  - 
from    which    long    ago    Meriel    had    taken    the 
water   for    their   morning    coffee.     Here    it  was 


"The  Romantics"  181 

a  deep,  silent  pool,  darkened  by  a  circle  of  tall 
elms.  It  was  muddied,  for  there  the  cattle  came 
to  drink.  At  this  hour  it  was  very  lonely  and 
still. 

The  gipsy  took  a  little  phial  from  her  bosom, 
and  poured  a  few  drops  into  the  dark  pool.  As 
she  did  so,  it  instantly  cleared,  and  became  a 
pellucid  mirror. 

"Look  down  there,"  she  said,  "and  tell  me 
what  you  see." 

"I  see  only  my  own  face,"  said  Wasteneys  in 
a  moment. 

"Wait,  and  go  on  looking." 

Presently  she  asked  again,  noticing  that  Was- 
teneys' face  had  grown  attentive,  even  startled: 
"Do  you  see  anything?" 

"  O,  God  ! "  was  his  only  answer,  as  he  went  on 
looking. 

"  I  will  tell  you  what  you  see,"  said  the  woman. 
"  You  see  a  meadow  in  the  early  morning,  and  in 
the  meadow  a  woman  is  gathering  mushrooms. 
She  has  black  hair,  and  large  —  very  large  —  dark 
eyes.  Now  she  raises  her  head,  and  — •  she  is 
looking  at  you  .  .  .  ' 

"  O  God ! "  cried  Wasteneys,  and  turned  his 
eyes  away. 

"  Will  you  look  again  ?  "  said  the  woman. 

He  looked  again,  and   there  in  the  pool  was 


1 8  2     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

Meriel  sitting  by'the  sea  playing  upon  her  violin, 
as  he  had  seen  her  last. 

"You  are  only  reading  my  thoughts,"  he  said 
impatiently.  "I  have  seen  all  this  before." 

"  Look  again,"  said  the  woman  quietly. 

He  looked,  and  out  of  the  depths  of  the  pool 
came  the  shadowy  aisles  of  a  Gothic  church. 
From  the  centre  presently  grew  and  grew  a  soft 
light,  and,  as  his  eyes  became  used  to  it,  he  saw 
a  chancel  lit  with  many  candles.  Then  he  be- 
came conscious  of  sad  figures  kneeling.  Then  at 
last  he  saw  a  white  figure  lying  among  flowers. 
A  dead,  beautiful  woman  —  lying  among  flowers. 
Suddenly  it  seemed  that  she  opened  her  eyes  and 
spoke. 

It  was  Meriel !  —  but  what  she  said  he  could 
not  hear. 

"  What  does  she  say  ?  "  he  asked  the  gipsy 
involuntarily. 

"  I  cannot  hear !  "  she  answered  —  and  then  a 
shoal  of  small  fishes  troubled  the  pool  and  the 
vision  passed  away  in  muddy  ripples. 

Wasteneys  turned  from  the  pool  as  one  who 
comes  out  of  a  dream.  The  familiar  meadows 
and  riverside  seemed  suddenly  strange  to  him. 
In  the  sun-reddened  twilight  the  gipsy  looked 
like  some  ancient  prophetess,  and  there  was  some- 
thing almost  motherly  tender  in  the  way  she 


"The  Romantics"  183 

looked  at  him.  It  was  strange,  too,  to  think  that 
she  was  the  only  one  in  the  world  who  really 
knew  his  story. 

"Mother!"  he  said  involuntarily,  "you  have 
seen  her  face.  What  am  I  to  do  ?  " 

"Poor  Child  of  the  Dark  Star,"  she  said,  "you 
can  never  be  really  happy.  But  I  can  help  you 
in  a  sad  way." 

"  How  ?  " 

"  I  can  help  you  to  forget." 

"How?" 

"  See !  in  this  packet  is  Forgetfulness  "  —  and 
she  drew  a  little  white  packet  from  the  folds  of 
her  dress. 

"  Dissolve  a  few  grains  of  this  in  a  glass  of 
golden  wine,  every  time  you  feel  you  must  think 
of  her  .  .  .  and,  if  you  cannot  forget  her,  it  will 
soon  become  a  joy  to  remember." 

"Must  I  forget?  "  asked  Wasteneys;  "is  there 
no  other  way? " 

"There  is  only  one  other,"  she  said,  signifi- 
cantly, and  Wasteneys  thought  of  the  novelist. 

"Only  that,"  she  answered.  "Shall  I  help  you 
to  that?  Love  is  very  strange.  It  is  a  noble 
way." 

"Leave  me,  mother,"  said  Wasteneys,  throwing 
himself  down  upon  the  grass.  "Leave  me." 

For  long  he  lay  there  in  a  reverie.     The  world 


1 84     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

grew  more  and  more  spectral  with  the  thickening 
dusk.  An  owl  began  to  whistle  from  a  neighbor- 
ing copse.  Presently  he  roused  himself,  and  his 
hand  touched  a  small  white  object.  It  was  the 
packet  —  of  Forgetfulness.  He  picked  it  up  and 
turned  homewards. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE   GREAT    DUEL 

MOST  men  of  character  begin  life  with  a 
sturdy  belief  in  their  control  of  their  own 
destiny,  and,  like  one  setting  out  upon  a 
journey,  they  scan  the  map  of  existence,  choose 
their  destination,  and  mark  out  the  route  they 
propose  to  take.  If  they  avoid  the  one  conclusive 
accident  of  death,  they  probably  reach  their  des- 
tination, but —  by  how  different  a  route  than  the 
one  proposed.  And  the  destination,  when  now  it 
is  reached,  how  different  it  seems.  Indeed,  little 
of  the  original  destination  is  left  but  its  name, 
and,  if  they  have  preserved  the  map  of  their  origi- 
nal route,  how  scored  over  it  is  with  sudden  diver- 
gence here,  and  huge  circumambulation  there; 
and  what  a  history  of  unforeseen  circumstance 
has  been  the  whole  dusty  yet  marvellous  journey. 
Indeed,  looked  back  upon,  it  seems  a  series  of 
spiritual  ambushes;  at  every  turn  of  the  road 
some  masked  purpose  of  God.  There  are  those 
who  early  in  the  pilgrimage  perceive  the  vanity  of 
their  boyish  maps,  and,  tearing  them  in  four,  cease 


1 86     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

to  affect  knowledge  of  their  itinerary,  throwing  the 
reins  upon  the  necks  of  their  horses.  Why  affect 
control  of  them,  when,  every  few  miles,  some  dark 
or  shining  rider  will  suddenly  sweep  out  upon  the 
way  and  take  the  reins  in  his  imperious  hands. 
And  sometimes  how  slight  the  causes  of  diver- 
gence. A  butterfly  flitting  suddenly  into  a  by- 
way, a  wandering  scent,  a  song  a  hundred  yards 
away  from  the  high-road,  and  then  another  and 
still  another,  and  always  another  hundred  yards 
away.  Then  too  the  many  false  destinations  that 
one  takes  for  the  real  destination,  the  fair  or  diffi- 
cult places  where  we  loiter,  then  camp,  then  build, 
then  marry,  which  must  some  day  prove  no  real 
destinations  after  all,  and  be  left  behind. 

Again,  sometimes  it  may  seem  that,  in  passion- 
ate pursuit  of  some  by-way,  we  have  forgotten 
our  original  destination,  forgotten  it  with  joy,  nay 
even  deliberately  renounced  it;  the  road  we  are 
now  taking  seems  so  absolutely  other ;  or  perhaps, 
with  bitter  sorrow,  we  see  ourselves  irresistibly 
carried  further  and  further  from  the  highway  of 
our  purpose.  Yet,  all  the  time,  whether  we  be 
glad  or  sorry  to  have  wandered,  the  mysterious 
guides  are  surely  leading  us  to  the  one  predes- 
tined goal. 

When  Wasteneys  had  drawn  up  his  forces  in 
battle-array  against  Meriel,  as  we  saw  in  a  previous 


The  Great  Duel  187 

chapter,  he  had,  it  may  be  remembered,  included 
"  Anger  "  and  "  Pride  "  with  derisive  comments. 
He  had  not  then  foreseen  what  reinforcements 
unexpected  circumstance-  might  bring  to  those 
despised  branches  of  the  service.  Nor  had  he 
realized  the  significance  of  his  merely  naming 
them,  however  ironically,  among  his  forces.  That 
he  should  even  have  thought  of  them  meant  far 
more  than  he  understood.  Evidently  there  had 
been  some  vague  feelings  moving  dimly  at  the 
back  of  his  mind,  which  had  at  last  so  far  suc- 
ceeded in  asserting  themselves  as  to  suggest  his 
giving  them  names.  A  few  months  ago  he  could 
not  have  conceived  of  anger  —  even  in  jest  — 
against  Meriel.  Anger  against  —  Meriel !  That 
had  seemed,  indeed,  an  inconceivable  sacrilege. 
For  was  she  not  the  embodiment  of  the  Divine 
Principle  in  his  life,  the  queen  that  could  do  no 
wrong?  He  had  blamed  himself  even  for  that  first 
whisper  of  criticism  deep  down  in  his  mind,  and 
he  had  hushed  it  sternly  as  one  hushes  profane 
thoughts  in  a  church.  And  as  to  "  Pride  "  —  what 
indeed  was  he  that  he  should  rebel  against  the 
mysterious  behavior  of  the  Divine? 

Destiny,  however,  which  does  really  seem  to 
take  a  surprising  interest  in  our  very  unimportant 
human  affairs,  had,  it  would  appear,  sent  down 
that  frivolous  club  of  "  Romantics"  to  Wasteneys 


1 88      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

with  a  more  serious  purpose  than  any  proposed 
by  Myrtle  Rome. 

Not  indeed  as  direct  counsel,  but  as  indirect 
suggestion,  that  paper  of  the  Vivisection  Novel- 
ist's had  no  little  influence  upon  Wasteneys.  To 
begin  with,  it  brought  clearly  into  his  conscious- 
ness the  reality  of  that  eternal  duel  of  the  sexes, 
which  a  year  or  two  before  he  would  either  have 
denied  altogether,  from  sheer  ignorance,  or  de- 
clared done  away  with  by  the  so-called  emanci- 
pation of  woman ;  as  if  that  "  emancipation " 
meant  anything  more  than  a  temporary  advantage 
of  one  party  to  the  duel  —  a  temporary  advantage 
of  the  eternal  coquetry  of  woman,  expressing  it- 
self indeed  more  seriously  than  heretofore,  or 
rather  with  more  pretentiousness,  but  essentially 
no  more  serious  than  any  such  advantage  gained 
by  woman  over  man  since  the  beginning. 

What  does  the  "  emancipation  "  of  woman  mean, 
except  that  woman  has  now  discovered  that  her 
mind  is  available  for  purposes  of  overcoming  man 
as  well  as  her  body?  The  female  mind,  however 
remarkable,  however  skilfully  it  may  imitate  the 
male,  is  only  an  advanced  form  of  chiffons.  It 
is  merely  one  more  lure,  one  more  honey-guide, 
for  the  desired  man-bee.  For  woman  is  eternally 
a  flower  —  and  what  a  beautiful  destiny  !  —  a 
flower  that  must  await  the  choice,  and  do  the 


The  Great  Duel  189 

pleasure,  of  her  lord  the  bee,  both  together  serv- 
ing thus  the  cosmic  will. 

And  in  this  duel  Wasteneys  began  to  conceive 
that  it  was  necessary  for  the  man  to  win  ;  or,  at  all 
events,  that,  in  the  interests  of  the  universe,  the 
issue  must  at  worst  be  a  draw,  and  that  man  should 
be  conquered  was  a  disgraceful  accident  not  per- 
missible even  to  consider. 

A  duel.  Yes  !  a  very  serious  duel.  And,  as  he 
pondered  on  this  new  thought  that  had  come  to 
him,  he  began  slowly  to  recognize  a  certain  deep- 
seated  primal  hatred  between  the  sexes.  It  almost 
seemed  as  if  it  was  hatred  rather  than  love  that 
kept  the  sexes  together;  or  as  if,  at  all  events, 
along  with  the  instinct  that  bound  them  in  appar- 
ent bonds  of  love,  went  a  corresponding  resent- 
ment that  they  should  thus  be  bound,  as  it  were, 
in  spite  of  themselves.  Among  the  other  animals, 
who  has  failed  to  observe  that  hatred,  toothed  and 
clawed,  often  follows  the  tenderest  union  of  love? 
It  would  almost  seem  as  if  two  everlasting  irrecon- 
cilable enemies  have,  as  by  a  love  philtre,  been 
tricked  into  a  truce  of  humiliating  caresses  — 
solely  for  the  advantage  of  a  third  party,  whom 
we  call  Nature.  Perhaps  the  female  really  hates 
the  male,  and  the  male  the  female,  but,  for  her 
own  mysterious  purpose,  Nature  throws  over  each 
a  scented  cloud  of  illusion,  whioh,  when  her  strange 


190     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

work  is  done,  disperses,  to  the  mutual  humiliation 
of  the  two  helpless  instruments. 

Whether  or  not  this  be  a  true  theory,  at  all 
events  Wasteneys,  with  some  surprise,  found  him- 
self growingly  rebellious  against  this  "  divine " 
revelation  that  for  so  long  had  ruled  his  life. 
Seditious  thoughts,  which  made  his  better  self 
shudder,  began  to  fill  his  mind.  Once,  in  a  hushed 
midnight,  soon  after  the  departure  of  "The  Ro- 
mantics," he  said  to  himself,  scarcely  above  his 
breath:  "After  all,  a  Man  is  something — be 
Woman  what  she  may !  " 

Growing  bolder,  he  even  ventured  upon  the 
assertion  that,  miraculous  as  Meriel  was,  he, 
Pagan  Wasteneys,  was  also  something —  some- 
thing entitled  to  consideration  in  the  scheme  of 
things,  a  being  too  with  a  duty  towards  himself, 
even  an  imperative  duty,  in  which  he  could  only 
fail  at  immortal  peril.  But  it  was  with  no  light 
heart  that  he  thus  timorously  ventured  to  formu- 
late, step  by  step,  so  iconoclastic  a  philosophy. 
O,  God  of  Love!  —  was  he  indeed  an  atheist; 
was  he,  a  mere  mortal,  daring  to  ask  questions? 
He  covered  his  face  —  expectant  of,  even  hoping 
for,  the  lightning.  Yet  how  superfluous  is  any  ex- 
ternal punishment  of  the  questioner  of  divine 
things.  Poor  persecuted  explorer,  the  agony  of 
finding  out  is  pain  and  penalty  enough.  Were  it 


The  Great  Duel  191 

& 

not  better  to  suffer  under  the  protection  of  an 
illusion  than  thus  to  suffer  on  behalf  of  so  weary 
a  truth?  Why  trouble  to  be  free?  Slavery  at 
least  had  its  rewards.  Where  are  the  rewards  of 
freedom?  "The  reward  of  freedom,"  cried  his 
soul,  "  is  to  be  free !  "  Alas !  the  reward  had  an 
abstract  sound. 

Yes !  it  almost  seemed  sometimes  as  if  it  were 
not  so  much  himself  that  was  fighting  this  battle, 
as  some  universal  principle  that  was  using  him 
on  behalf  of  the  Everlasting  Male. 

Ancestral  instincts  of  dominance  thus  unexpect- 
edly came  to  his  aid,  instincts  which,  but  a  short 
time  ago,  he  would  have  "  reasoned  "  away;  and 
at  this  moment  he  came  upon  a  philosopher,  who 
was  evidently  too  ill-balanced  to  be  taken  without 
many  reservations,  but  one  of  whose  phrases 
persisted  hatefully  in  his  mind :  "  Thou  goest  to 
woman,  remember  thy  whip."  But  a  short  time 
ago  he  would  have  hated  this  phrase  with  his 
whole  soul ;  and  he  was  much  disquieted  to  note 
the  change  in  him  which  allowed  him  even  men- 
tally to  tolerate  it.  To  him  the  idea  of  any  form 
of  arrogant  mastership  of  one  being  over  another 
had  always  been  painful.  Apart  from  any  of 
those  considerations  which  sound  more  serious, 
but  perhaps  do  not  go  deeper,  it  jarred  his  sense 
of  courtesy.  Even  the  accepted  lordship  of  man 


192     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

over  the  animals  had  been  to  him  an  unwelcome 
thought,  and  to  thrash  a  dog  or  to  "  break  "  a 
horse  had  always  hurt  something  in  him,  which 
resented  this  arrogant  interference  of  one  species 
with  the  native  liberty  of  another;  whether  or 
not  the  subservience  of  the  one  and  the  lordship 
of  the  other  had  been  scripturally  or  scientifically 
decreed.  All,  higher  and  lower,  were  so  evidently 
servants  of  a  mysterious  universe,  in  which  per- 
haps the  distance  between  a  man  and  a  dog  was 
so  slight,  compared  with  the  distance  between 
man  and  unknown  supernal  beings,  that  to  some 
high-watching  unseen  eye  man's  arrogant  asser- 
tion of  it  might  well  seem  supremely  ridiculous 
and  pathetic. 

For  the  man,  therefore,  who  had  felt  thus  about 
the  very  animals,  it  was  necessarily  surprising  and 
painful  for  him  to  find  something  unreasoning 
within  him  suddenly  asserting  the  lordship  of  man 
over  woman,  and  saying  over  with  a  certain  com- 
placence the  phrase  I  have  quoted.  No  doubt  it 
was  only  a  reaction  from  the  other  extreme  in 
which  so  long  he  had  resided,  and  really  amounted 
to  nothing  more  than  a  reassertion  of  his  own 
independence  violently  made. 

But  the  feeling,  however  open  to  criticism, 
served  its  purpose  in  that  it  contributed  to  the  en- 
ergy necessary  for  that  wise  and  wary  unwinding 


The  Great  Duel  193 

of  himself  which  the  old  love-doctor  had  advised. 
It  seemed  a  coarse  way  with  Meriel,  but  some 
gossamers  are  so  closely  spun  about  the  captive 
soul  that  they  can  only  be  severed  with  a  sword 
—  or  even  a  common  hatchet.  But  the  pain  of 
cutting  these  gossamers  !  They  were  no  longer 
like  exterior  bonds,  but  thrilling  silken  strings, 
each  one  of  which  seemed  to  pass  through  his 
heart.  Wasteneys,  indeed,  was  like  a  man  who 
must  perform  a  surgical  operation  upon  himself — 
the  most  difficult  of  all  surgical  operations.  He 
must  himself  cut  out  his  own  heart  —  for  the  good 
of  his  general  health  ! 

To  help  him  in  this,  Providence,  apparently, 
had  first  put  into  Myrtle  Rome's  pretty  frivo- 
lous head  the  idea  of  "  The  Romantics,"  and  then 
sent  down  a  mad  novelist  to  Wasteneys.  So 
roundabout  and  apparently  inconsequent  are  the 
methods  of  Providence. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

RELIGION  TO   THE   RESCUE 

AGAIN,  he  had  written  down  "  Religion," 
with  but  little  hope  that  it  would  answer 
to  his  summons.  Where,  indeed,  was  the 
religious  impulse  to  come  from ;  or  rather,  where 
was  the  form  to  make  his  vague,  though  rich, 
religious  impulse  operative,  the  form  he  could 
accept?  —  for,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  religion, 
in  the  most  religious  minds,  is  thus  dependent 
upon  its  form.  And  yet,  perhaps,  this  is  not  so 
very  surprising,  for  what  is  form  but  an  instru- 
ment? When  one  closely  considers  the  matter, 
one  comes  to  see  that  the  religious  sense  naturally 
craves,  even  relies  upon,  formulae  for  its  expres- 
sion, as  the  artistic  sense  relies  upon  its  formulae, 
form  and  color,  and  so  forth.  Religion  is  one 
of  the  forms  of  human  expression  —  let  us  unani- 
mously admit  that  it  is  the  highest  —  and  is,  there- 
fore, as  inconceivable  without  form  as  language 
without  words. 

Though  Wasteneys  had  come  to  see  that  mere 
reason  was  inadequate  as  a  critic  of  religion,  he 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  195 

was  not  yet  prepared  —  nor  was  he  ever  likely 
to  be  prepared  —  to  return  for  the  expression  of 
his  spiritual  sense  to  formulae  which  certainly  came 
within  the  scope  of  the  critical  reason.  Long  as 
he  might,  in  such  moments  as  that  Easter  morning, 
to  employ  again  the  fair  old  sanctified  forms  of 
religious  usage ;  he  knew  that  for  him  the  life  had 
gone  out  of  them  forever.  They  had  no  longer 
any  power  to  concentrate  the  spiritual  force  of  his 
nature  —  which,  thus  lacking  organs  for  its  ex- 
pression, ran  to  waste.  He  had  at  one  time 
dreamed  that  it  might  be  his  task  to  strike  out  new 
forms  for  the  homeless  religious  spirit,  and  it  had 
seemed  to  him,  as  to  others  with  the  same  dream, 
that  the  forms  of  art  must  more  and  more  take 
upon  them  sacerdotal  duties.  Art,  at  its  highest, 
is  an  affirmation  of  the  spiritual  nature  of  human 
life,  and  of  all  life ;  and  such  affirmation  is  the 
essence  of  religion.  Yet  art  represented  rather 
a  longing,  an  aspiration,  than  an  actual  authorita- 
tive revelation.  Art  dreams,  but  religion  knows. 

And,  after  all,  perhaps  it  was  not  so  much  new 
formulae  that  Wasteneys  had  been  in  need  of,  as 
of  some  new  emotional  impulse,  a  renewed  vision 
of  divine  things  sufficiently  clear  and  sure  to  arouse 
his  sluggish  soul  to  that  passionate  optimism  the 
practical  outcome  of  which  is  that  serious  conduct 
of  life,  for  which  so  long  he  had  lacked  a  motive 


196     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

sufficiently  powerful.  Given  that  vivifying  im- 
pulse, it  might  well  happen  that  the  old  forms 
might  once  more  become  for  him  living  organs 
sufficiently  expressive.  Yes !  the  more  he  pon- 
dered, the  more  he  saw  that  it  was  not  so  much 
the  old  forms  that  had  worn  out,  but  the  vital 
spiritual  forces  in  his  own  soul  that  had  dried  up. 
So  long  as  these  were  renewed,  surely  it  mattered 
little  what  forms  they  chose  to  vitalize.  When  the 
fire  descends  upon  the  altar,  the  constituents  of 
the  sacrifice  are  of  small  importance. 

Though  his  love  for  Meriel  had  certainly  not 
begun  as  a  reinforcement  of  his  spiritual  life,  but 
had  indeed,  superficially  speaking,  operated  in 
precisely  the  opposite  direction,  yet  he  began  to 
see  that  in  the  end  its  significance  was  to  be  that 
of  a  spiritual  revelation ;  that  this  love  had  come 
to  him,  not  for  his  personal  joy,  not  for  any  mere 
human  happiness,  but  simply  for  the  sake  of  that 
renewed  vision  of  the  divine.  For  many  years 
"  reason "  had  closed  his  eyes  to  the  essentially 
supernatural  ordinance  of  life.  It  was  necessary 
for  a  passion  whose  reality  he  could  not  question, 
and  yet  a  passion  essentially  unreasonable,  to 
possess  him,  that  he  might  perceive  once  more 
the  obscured  divinity  in  mortal  things,  and  thus 
awaken  to  his  immortal  responsibilities  as  a 
mysterious  actor  in  a  mysterious  universe. 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  1 97 

Wasteneys  had  indeed  been  right  in  considering 
Meriel  as  of  supreme  importance  in  his  life ;  and 
he  had  been  mistaken  only  in  his  estimate  of  the 
nature  of  that  importance.  He  had  deemed1  her 
important  for  her  own  sake.  Now  he  began  to 
see  that  she  was  not  the  end,  but  one  means  to  an 
end,  an  end  which  for  a  while  he  had  forgotten. 
Though  the  first  result  of  her  influence  had  been 
that  he  had  cast  all  his  duties  to  the  winds,  she 
had  really  come  into  his  life  that  he  should  appre- 
hend all  the  more  forcefully  the  one  duty  which 
includes  all  others,  man's  duty  towards  the  cosmos. 
This,  of  course,  is  what  Father  Selden  had  fore- 
seen when  he  had  said  to  himself:  "  If  he  loves 
a  woman,  he  must  end  by  loving  God."  One 
need  hardly  say  that  the  phrase  had  not  occurred 
to  him  as  for  general  application.  It  is  only  in 
exceptional  natures  that  the  love  of  woman  ends 
in  the  love  of  God.  For  the  majority  of  men, 
as  the  Catholic  Church  has  foreseen,  the  love  of 
woman  is  anything  but  an  ally  of  the  love  of  God. 
In  the  average  nature,  indeed,  it  is  a  dangerous 
sensual  distraction,  against  which  the  Catholic 
Church  does  well  to  protest  by  the  symbol  of 
celibacy  —  for,  as  all  the  world  knows,  celibacy  is 
not  a  literal,  but  only  a  symbolical  condition  of  the 
Catholic  priesthood.  It  is  merely  a  metaphorical 
recognition  that  for  most  men  women  are  dan- 


198     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

gerous  enemies  of  the  divine  life.  It  is  only  the 
select  natures  among  men  that  are  helped  by 
the  love  of  women,  and  they  are  helped,  because 
they  have  the  power  to  use  woman  as  a  means 
instead  of  an  end.  It  is  one  of  the  fiercest  temp- 
tations of  the  spiritual-natured  to  treat  woman  as 
an  end  in  herself.  You  might  as  well  consider 
a  rose-bush  as  an  end  in  itself.  Woman,  indeed, 
like  the  elemental  spirits,  is  for  man  exactly  what 
man  chooses  to  make  her.  She  can  materialize 
him,  or  spiritualize  him,  as  he  himself  decides. 
Had  Meriel  only  been  more  normally  woman, 
had  his  love  for  the  mortal  creation  been  more 
indulged,  Wasteneys'  materialization  had  been 
inevitable.  Fortunately,  Meriel  had  denied  him 
those  satisfactions  that  narcotize  the  soul.  Instead 
she  had  reawakened  in  him  an  unrest  which  claimed 
a  nobler  peace  than  any  which  woman  could  bring, 
set  his  soul  once  more  asking  questions  for  which 
no  mere  woman  was  sufficient  answer.  Once  more 
the  boyish  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness 
was  clamorous  within  him.  Surely  it  was  well 
that  he  should  have  been  saved  from  deeming 
a  woman  adequate  for  the  satisfaction  of  that 
divine  appetite.  And  yet,  what  must  he  do  to  be 
saved?  Whence  was  to  come  the  true  heavenly 
food,  and  what  was  the  heavenly  work  clearly 
given  him  to  do? 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  199 

In  spite  of  his  love  and  reverence  for  Father 
Selden,  Wasteneys  knew  that  the  answers  of  his 
Father  Confessor  to  these  questions  could  not  be 
his  answers.  The  Church  of  Rome  had  been,  and 
still  continued,  so  dangerous  a  spiritual  obscuran- 
tist, so  unscrupulous  a  trader  in  human  supersti- 
tion, that,  so  far  from  his  ever  dreaming  of  joining 
that  subtle  communion,  he  rather  regarded  the 
complete  demolition  of  the  church  of  his  fathers 
as  the  first  condition  of  the  New  Church  of  the 
Spirit.  The  Church  of  Rome  was  the  Bastile  of 
Faith.  So  long  as  one  stone  of  it  stood  upon  an- 
other, no  spiritual,  or  even  political,  progress  was 
possible  for  mankind.  Rather  indeed  than  return 
to  that  exquisite,  aristocratic,  politically  vigorous, 
but  spiritually  effete,  communion,  he  could  have 
conceived  himself  joining  some  na'ive,  democratic, 
even  vulgar  and  grotesque,  schism,  in  which,  how- 
ever coarsely,  the  warm  blood  of  faith  freely  circu- 
lated. Religion,  he  realized,  was  a  serious  matter, 
not  merely  the  concern  of  spiritual  and  moral 
dandies.  Like  all  forces  with  a  big  universal  work 
to  do,  it  must  often  be  coarse  in  its  methods, 
and  unfastidious  in  the  choice  of  its  instruments. 
There  had  recently  been  moments  in  which 
Wasteneys  had  seriously  considered  whether  or 
not  it  was  his  duty  to  join  the  Salvation  Army. 
And  when  the  small  devil  known  as  the  Sense 


2OO     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

of  Humor  grinned  him  out  of  the  impulse,  he  real- 
ized more  than  ever  that  humor,  as  usually  un- 
derstood, is  an  impertinent  critic  of  such  feelings ; 
and  that,  perhaps,  your  true  humorist  is  known 
by  no  gift  so  surely  as  his  power  to  distinguish 
between  what  we  call  "  a  lack  of  humor "  and 
a  serious  purpose.  Indeed,  few  people  are  strong 
and  wise  enough  to  be  trusted  with  the  sense  of 
humor,  which  becomes  a  dangerous  solvent  in 
the  wrong  hands,  too  often  destroying  in  its  pos- 
sessor his  more  serious  qualities  of  heart  and 
mind. 

For  this  religious  sense,  too,  the  mysteriously 
decreed  reinforcement  had  been  provided,  and  it 
was  to  come  from  one  of  those  popular  expres- 
sions of  religion  where  at  one  time  he  would  have 
been  little  inclined  to  seek  it.  Adeline  Wood  had 
been  brought  up  among  Nonconformists,  and, 
though  she  had  been  compelled  to  abandon  Non- 
conformist theology,  she  sometimes  found  herself 
involuntarily  longing  for  those  old-fashioned  Sun- 
day mornings  of  stormy  prayer  and  praise,  when 
each  individual  in  some  inspired  congregation  of 
earnest  worshippers  seems  to  lose  personal  iden- 
tity and  be  merged  in  the  general  gusto  of  jubilant 
faith.  A  few  streets  away  from  her  Adams  ceiling 
was  the  great  chapel  of  a  Wesleyan  preacher,  a 
famous  spiritual  fighter,  a  man  of  great  personal 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  201 

force  and  charm.  There  she  would  sometimes  go, 
as  sometimes  she  would  go  to  hear  great  music, 
or  press  her  way  into  the  pit  at  theatres.  She 
loved  the  sea-like  invigoration  of  a  great  crowd 
of  people  all  filled  with  the  same  enthusiasm.  It 
made  her  forget  the  loneliness  that  sometimes 
came  over  her,  like  an  ache.  She  lost  her  per- 
sonal identity,  and  became  but  one  joyous  wave 
of  a  buoyant  human  sea.  Of  this  great  preacher 
Adeline  had  occasionally  spoken  to  Wasteneys, 
and  one  Sunday  afternoon,  chancing  to  pass  the 
doors  of  the  great  man's  chapel,  and,  seeing  the 
preacher's  name  conspicuously  posted,  he  decided 
to  go  in,  partly  out  of  curiosity,  and  partly  for 
Adeline's  sake.  Adeline  was  still  at  her  post  as 
nurse,  and  Wasteneys  was  missing  her  more  than 
he  realized.  She  wrote  to  him  sometimes,  happy 
letters  full  of  the  joys  and  humors  of  her  deputy 
motherhood,  letters  which  gave  him  dim  pangs 
of  an  undefined  pain,  and  made  him  feel  strangely 
lonely. 

On  entering  the  vast  circular  hall  —  already  a 
humming  bee-hive  of  faith,  though  the  service 
did  not  begin  for  half-an-hour  —  Wasteneys  was 
struck,  even  startled,  with  a  characteristic  which 
he  had  never  before  associated  with  churches  and 
chapels:  the  place  was  alive!  indeed  it  vibrated 
with  vitality.  He  understood  at  once  why  Adeline 


202     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

cared  to  come  here.  It  was  a  sort  of  human  sea- 
side. The  mere  murmur  of  the  vast  crowd  was  as 
invigorating  as  the  sound  of  the  sea.  It  was  a 
spiritual  ocean  awaiting  its  Neptune. 

When  the  Great  Preacher  took  his  place  upon  the 
platform,  Westeneys  was  immediately  attracted. 
He  recognized  him  at  once  as  a  notable  performer 
upon  the  Human  Instrument — and,  in  so  describ- 
ing him,  he  implied  no  charlatanism.  Far  from 
that,  he  soon  gave  himself  up  to  the  master- 
ful bow  of  the  speaker's  energetic  faith.  By  a 
coincidence,  which  bore  an  unfortunate  resem- 
blance to  the  stories  of  the  Religious  Tract  Soci- 
ety, the  preacher  had  chosen  a  theme  which,  for 
appropriateness,  he  could  not  have  bettered,  had 
he  deliberately  spoken  individually  to  Wasteneys, 
instead  of  generally  to  two  thousand  odd  listeners, 
all  equally  in  need  of  salvation.  His  theme  was 
the  necessity  of  national  religion,  and  the  inade- 
quacy of  mere  "  culture  "  to  take  its  place.  With 
much  force,  and  with  a  grasp  of  historical  illus- 
tration which  gained,  rather  than  lost,  from  pic- 
turesqueness  of  presentation,  he  showed  how  the 
best-intentioned  morality  was  ineffective  compared 
with  an  apprehension  of  certain  supernaturally  re- 
vealed truths.  Man  collectively,  as  individually, 
was  incapable  of  saving  himself.  Indeed,  without 
the  assurance  of  some  "  far-off  divine  event,"  it 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  203 

was  not  to  be  expected  that  man  should  even  see 
the  necessity  of  "  saving "  himself.  If  his  life 
ended  with  the  grave,  and  if  the  harvest  of  his 
self-discipline  was  to  be  reaped  entirely  by  his 
descendants,  it  was  asking  a  superhuman,  almost 
priggish,  sacrifice  on  his  part  —  when  one  con- 
sidered the  hardships  of  godly  living  —  that  he 
should  deny  himself  the  comparatively  small  mar- 
gin of  self-indulgence  which  even  a  worldly  life  of 
average  success  allows.  Without  the  impetus  of 
an  immortal  significance,  morality,  so-called  - 
that  is  clean  and  seemly,  and  reasonably  altruistic 
living  —  was  merely  a  matter  of  taste.  Really 
nice  people  might  prefer  to  be  spiritually  clean, 
as  they  preferred  physical  cleanliness,  from  per- 
sonal comfort;  but,  without  the  assurance  of  a 
divine  meaning  to  the  human  struggle,  it  was 
difficult  to  show  how  that  struggle  was  worth 
while  for  those  who  lacked  the  taste  or  energy  for 
carrying  it  on.  Spiritual  aesthetics  might  help 
some  natures,  but  such  natures  were  few,  and, 
for  the  most  part,  lacking  in  force.  What  the 
world  needed  was  as  real  a  reason  for  believing 
in  goodness  as  it  had  for  believing  in  food  and 
clothing.  Unless  goodness  could  be  proved  a 
vital  necessity  of  the  individual  soul,  it  was  idle 
to  ask  large  numbers  of  people  to  practise  it.  As 
life  is  usually  lived,  it  necessitates  quite  sufficient 


204     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

self-sacrifice.  To  expect  us  to  deny  ourselves  not 
merely  in  the  present  but  in  the  future,  not  merely 
for  our  children  and  our  friends,  but  for  the 
unborn  mendicant,  is  surely  a  fanciful  demand; 
unless  man  is  indeed  a  being  of  an  immortal 
destiny,  and,  therefore,  properly,  of  immortal 
obligations. 

Morality,  the  gospel  of  "  sweetness  and  light," 
might  be  sufficient  for  natures  of  exceptional  grace, 
though  even  so  it  might  be  held  that  such  force  as 
it  possessed  came  of  the  religious  impulse  from 
which  it  originally  sprang.  All  our  secular  altru- 
istic movements  took  their  life  originally  from 
Christianity,  however  careful  they  might  be  to 
dissociate  themselves  from  Christian  theology. 
And,  however  counsels  of  morality  might  operate 
upon  special  natures,  who,  it  is  usually  seen,  are 
living  good  lives  on  an  inherited  capital  of  good- 
ness, transferred  to  them  from  pious  ancestors ;  it 
was  certain  that  mankind  en  masse  stood  in  need 
of  supernatural  incentives  to  clean  and  serious 
living.  It  was  one  of  the  clearest  lessons  of  his- 
tory that  what  we  call  national  prosperity  went 
hand  in  hand  with  a  vigorous  national  religion. 
When  a  nation  begins  to  secularize  ideals,  which 
are  properly  dependent  for  their  life  on  mysterious 
revelations  and  mysteriously  supplied  energy,  its 
power  begins  to  decline  from  that  moment.  When 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  205 

in  Greece  and  Rome  human  philosophy  took  the 
place  of  the  gods  —  imperfect  hints  of  the  divine 
as  those  gods  were  —  Greece  and  Rome  surely 
declined,  before  nations  inspired  by  the  vigorous 
youth  of  a  new  religious  ideal.  Modern  philoso- 
phers, who  would  substitute  moral  philosophy  for 
religion,  had  in  Greece  and  Rome  an  object  lesson 
which  was  unanswerable.  The  experiment  they 
would  try  had  been  tried  before,  and  completely 
failed  ;  tried,  too,  under  circumstances  exceptionally 
favorable,  tried  with  two  races  which  an  eminent 
ethnologist  had  declared  as  superior  intellectually 
to  the  English  race  as  that  race  was  to  some  savage 
race  of  central  Africa.  Could  there  be  a  clearer 
illustration  of  the  truth  that  man's  brains  cannot 
save  him?  If  philosophy  and  culture  could  save  a 
nation,  Greece  and  Rome  would  have  been  power- 
ful nations  to  this  day.  And  this  law  of  nations  is 
the  law  of  individuals  too.  Some  few  exceptions 
only  proved  the  rule;  and,  generally  speaking,  it 
was  true  for  individuals  as  for  nations  —  that  serious 
and  beautiful  lives  could  not  be  lived  merely  on 
social  motives  and  incentives. 

A  year  or  two  before  Wasteneys  would  have 
contested  this  reasoning,  but  life  had  taught  him 
how  essentially  true  it  was.  The  divine  motive  in 
his  life  had  been  symbolized  by  Meriel.  That  with- 
drawn, how  purposeless,  how  unworthy,  his  life  had 


206      The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

been.  Poor,  indeed,  had  seemed  the  interests  of 
culture,  and  certainly  little  dynamic ;  so  soon  as  he 
lacked  the  Divine  Incentive. 

Yet  though  he  realized  this  mentally,  and  was 
conscious  of  an  awakening  within  him  of  spiritual 
forces  long  dormant,  he  could  not  yet  see  where 
the  new  incentive  was  to  come  from.  Here  the 
preacher  failed  him.  The  Divine  Incentive,  said 
the  preacher,  could  only  come  through  an  accept- 
ance of  the  Christian  revelation.  Wasteneys,  on 
the  other  hand,  could  not  but  feel  that  here  the 
preacher  was  endeavoring  to  lay  down  his  own 
personal  experience  as  a  universal  law.  Not  to 
speak  it  profanely,  Wasteneys  might  in  a  sense 
have  preached  that  the  only  way  of  salvation  was 
belief  in  Meriel  —  for  it  was  through  her  that  the 
something  divine  in  existence  had  been  most 
authoritatively  revealed  to  him.  Mentally,  Waste- 
neys was  very  much  at  one  with  the  preacher. 
He  might  almost  have  used  the  very  words  of  the 
Christian  creed  :  "  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost ;  the 
holy  Catholic  Church ;  the  Communion  of  Saints ; 
the  forgiveness  of  sins,  the  resurrection  of  the 
body,  and  the  life  everlasting"  —all  these  being 
symbolical  terms  for  literal  truths  which  he  was 
beginning  to  comprehend.  But  how  to  make  this 
mental  acceptance  operative  in  the  moral  sphere ! 
One  firmly  believes  in  many  facts  which  have  no 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  207 

influence  upon  our  lives,  and  one  may  admire  many 
various  activities  without  any  wish  to  participate  in 
them  ourselves.  Belief,  to  be  of  any  practical  force, 
must  be  passionate.  The  preacher  apprehended 
these  truths  so  passionately  that  he  desired  with 
all  his  heart  to  persuade  others  to  apprehend  them 
too.  Perhaps  Wasteneys  would  some  day  appre- 
hend them  no  less  passionately,  but,  meanwhile, 
he  saw  them  —  as  a  convalescent  contemplates  the 
vigor  of  athletic  youth  —  with  but  a  dim  wish  to 
take  part  in  the  game. 

It  is  the  failure  of  many  preachers  to  realize  that 
it  is  comparatively  easy  for  some  to  reach  that  state 
of  mind  in  which  one  exclaims :  "  Lord,  I  believe." 
The  business  of  the  great  preacher,  as  the  greatest 
have  instinctively  realized,  is  not  argument,  but 
persuasion.  It  is  their  success  to  infuse  into  us 
their  personal  enthusiasm,  to  make  us  as  passion- 
ate for  righteousness,  as  if  righteousness  were  a 
woman ! 

Of  this  quality  of  persuasiveness  the  preacher 
presently  proved  himself  possessed  in  no  common 
degree.  His  sermon  had  struck  Wasteneys  by  its 
intelligence,  by  its  first-hand  acquaintance  with 
the  things  of  the  soul ;  but  it  was  not  till  an  after- 
service,  in  which  the  preacher  drew  closer  to  that 
more  earnest  and  sensitive  part  of  his  audience 
which  had  remained  behind  after  the  completion 


208     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

of  the  general  service  —  as  is  the  custom  among 
Wesleyans  —  that  he  realized  what  a  force  the  man 
was.  The  service  in  which  the  preacher  makes  an 
individual  appeal  to  such  members  of  his  audience 
as  have  not  before  accepted  the  Christian  revela- 
tion, definitely  to  proclaim  themselves  then  and 
there  Christians,  is  a  customary  feature  of  all 
Wesleyan  services,  and,  like  all  religious  offices, 
may  be,  and  often  is,  ridiculous,  in  the  wrong 
hands.  The  preacher,  however,  was  not  only  a 
born  evangelist,  but  he  possessed  sacerdotal  gifts 
as  well ;  and  he  was  thus  able  poignantly  to  vitalize 
a  hackneyed  method  with  his  personal  sincerity, 
and  to  impart  a  moving  dignity  to  an  office  which 
might  well  have  offended  by  a  democratic  famili- 
arity of  tone.  There  was  something  almost  tragic 
in  the  strong  emotion  of  his  appeal,  and  Wasteneys 
noted  as  strange  how  remarkably  he  was  able  to 
establish  a  particular  rapport  with  each  single 
member  of  his  audience,  to  make  each  forget  that 
this  was  a  public  gathering,  and  entirely  to  banish 
that  shamefaced  self-consciousness  which  naturally 
besets  all  but  the  most  ardent  souls,  when  called 
upon  to  make  such  public  confession  of  faith. 
Conventional  tremors  fell  away  before  that  master- 
ful pleading  voice.  Here  and  there  in  the  vast 
audience  one  and  another  silently  stood  up,  and 
the  preacher  spoke  to  the  man  or  woman  thus 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  209 

mutely  signifying  the  mystic  change  of  the  heart, 
as  though  they  two  were  alone  together  in  the 
presence  of  God.  Wasteneys  marvelled  at  the  love 
in  the  man's  voice,  the  yearnings  to  make  those 
who  were  still  wandering  in  darkness  see  the  light 
that  was  so  clear  to  him,  and  the  skill  with  which 
time  after  time  he  varied  his  mode  of  appeal.  He 
was  so  good  and  yet  so  clever  —  this  fisher  of  men. 
But  how  good  !  How  unselfishly  was  he  spending 
a  physical  strength  manifestly  not  inexhaustible, 
straining  every  emotional,  magnetizing,  nerve  in 
him  to  catch  another  wandering  soul. 

"  God  !  how  good  the  man  is  !  "  Wasteneys  ex- 
claimed under  his  breath,  and  it  seemed  to  him 
that  in  another  moment  he  must  obey  that  plead- 
ing voice,  so  stern  and  yet  so  gentle,  and  definitely 
take  his  stand  on  the  side  of  the  spirit. 

But  —  the  platform !  Was  it  his  platform  ? 
Was  this  somewhat  crude  and  provincial  organiza- 
tion that  through  which  he  could  best  express  the 
surging  truth  that  was  in  him  ?  The  more  vital 
voice  within  warned  him  against  a  spiritual  fas- 
tidiousness, which  has  brought  so  many  spiritual 
impulses  to  nought.  It  told  him  that  the  man 
who  does  the  work  of  the  spirit  takes  the  first 
instruments  to  his  hand,  at  the  moment  of  his 
call,  and  is  not  delicate  because  some  of  them 

14 


2 1  o     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

chance  to   be  somewhat  old-fashioned  and  coun- 
trified in  shape. 

While  he  hesitated,  suddenly  a  sweet  voice  near 
him  said:  " Would  you  care  to  speak  with  Mr. 

—  after  the  service  ?  " 

A  little  bird-like  girl,  in  a  costume  that  suggested 
both  a  nurse  and  a  nun,  had  stolen  near  to  him 
while  he  was  wrapt  in  the  preacher's  voice. 

"  I  should,"  he  said,  almost  involuntarily,  noting 
the  lit  small  face,  and  thinking  how  beautiful  good- 
ness made  certain  faces. 

It  had  been  one  of  the  preacher's  innovations  in 
a  church  which  sometimes  looked  askance  at  him 
for  the  umconventionality  —  and  consequent  suc- 
cess —  of  his  methods,  to  found  a  kind  of  lay  sis- 
terhood. Though  he  was  a  stalwart  enemy  of 
Rome,  he  was  not  a  narrow  one.  He  saw  that  the 
methods  of  Rome  were  founded  on  a  deep  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature,  and  answered  to  human 
needs,  and  in  this  sisterhood  he  adopted  one  of  the 
most  powerful  of  them.  This  sisterhood  —  of 
which  the  sisters  were  not  required  to  take  any 
irrevocable  vows  —  was  not  so  much  religious  in 
character  as  a  secular  plan  for  utilizing  by  clever 
organization  the  unemployed  pity  and  goodness 
of  lonely  woman-hearts.  Little  Sister  Catherine 
was  one  of  the  most  active  of  the  sisters.  A  child- 
ishly tiny,  fragile  girl,  with  a  face  that  was  al- 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  2 1 1 

most  spectral  with  eager  spiritual  light,  one  would 
hardly  have  thought,  as  one  looked  at  her,  how 
much  intimate  knowledge  of  the  world's  darkness 
lay  behind  those  pure  brows  and  living  blue 
eyes.  That  holy  little  face  had  looked  on  human 
sorrow  and  vice  in  their  foulest  and  most  pain- 
ful forms,  and  that  pure  girl's  heart  was  the 
sympathetic  depository  of  the  strangest  human 
histories. 

The  work  of  the  sisterhood  might  have  been 
summed  up  in  the  beautiful  old  words :  "  Come 
unto  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy-laden, 
and  I  will  give  you  rest."  No  one  was  too  foul  or 
too  broken  to  win  the  sympathy  and  help  of  these 
good  sisters.  They  had  only  to  come  and  say: 
"  I  am  unhappy.  Help  me  " ;  and  it  was  the  aim 
even  of  the  sisters  to  save  them  this  exertion,  so 
far  as  possible.  At  these  services,  one  of  which 
Wasteneys  was  attending,  they  made  it  their  busi- 
ness to  hunt  for  souls,  like  sleuth-hounds,  in  the 
vast  audience.  They  watched  the  faces  of  the  lis- 
teners, and,  with  their  terrible  knowledge  of  human 
misery,  they  picked  out  the  faces  it  might  be 
possible  to  help,  unerring  specialists  of  sorrow. 
Sister  Catherine  had  noted  Wasteneys  early  in 
the  service,  for  there  was  that  about  him  which 
made  him  somewhat  of  an  apparition  in  that  Non- 
conformist hall,  —  where,  however,  it  was  no  un- 


212     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

common  occurrence  —  such  was  the  spell  and  the 
fame  of  the  preacher  —  to  find  a  Cabinet  Minister, 
or  a  great  artist,  listening,  with  a  long  look  in  his 
eyes.  She  had  watched  the  effect  of  the  service 
upon  his  face  and  divined  something  of  his  need. 
Thus  her  instinct  for  sad  people  had  once  more 
distinguished  itself. 

When  Wasteneys  went  behind  to  see  the  preacher, 
any  embarrassment  he  might  naturally  have  feared 
was  instantly  dispersed  by  the  immediacy  of  the 
preacher's  recognition  of  him.  The  preacher  was 
not  a  spiritual  leader  for  nothing,  and,  as  the 
woman  in  Sister  Catherine  had  seen  the  sorrow  in 
his  face,  so  the  man  in  the  preacher  had  divined 
something  of  the  cause  of  it. 

The  wise  provision  of  tea  gave  a  social  character 
to  a  serious  occasion,  and  Wasteneys  was  inter- 
ested to  notice  how  merry  these  Christians  were 
over  their  cups  of  tea. 

There  were  several  sisters  and  many  of  their 
conquests  gathered  in  the  little  tea-room.  No 
doubt  each  of  these  spiritual  victims,  so  to  say, 
had  expected  some  rather  unctuous  t$te-a-tete  with 
the  great  preacher.  If  so,  they  were  pleasantly 
disappointed.  Instead,  they  found  him  the  gay 
father  of  his  spiritual  family.  The  stern  prophet 
of  the  platform  was  for  the  moment  laid  aside  and 
he  was  the  gayest  of  men,  a  very  boy  for  all  his 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  2 1  3 

sixty  years.  Such  humanity  seldom  accompan- 
ies such  sound  and  serious  divinity.  He  chaffed, 
one  might  almost  say  flirted,  in  a  fatherly  way, 
with  the  sisters,  and  all  sorts  of  stories  of  the 
humors  behind  the  serious  work  of  the  day  were 
exchanged  and  discussed.  The  new-comers  felt 
themselves  admitted  to  a  sort  of  innocent  be- 
hind-the-scenes. 

At  the  same  time,  the  preacher  was  on  the  look- 
out for  the  serious  word  with  any  one  of  his  visit- 
ors who  seemed  anxious  to  seek  it;  and,  when 
Wasteneys  found  himself,  tea-cup  in  hand,  for  a 
moment  tete-a-tete  with  him,  he  was  almost  startled 
with  the  sudden  intimacy  of  the  few  brief  words 
the  preacher  addressed  to  him  —  words  in  no  way 
sanctimonious,  no  mere  perfunctory  talk,  but  words 
that  he  felt  were  really  meant  for  him. 

He  on  his  part  had  been  outspokenly  sincere. 

"  It  almost  broke  my  heart,"  he  had  said,  "  to 
hear  how  you  pleaded  with  us,  how  you  strove  to 
make  us  feel  what  you  were  feeling,  see  what  you 
were  seeing." 

"  I  wish  you  would  come  and  help  me,"  the 
preacher  had  replied,  looking  at  him  steadfastly. 
"  There  are  few  who  could  help  me  as  much  as 
you." 

Wasteneys  thought  of  Father  Selden's  words: 
"  I  do  not  fear  for  you.  You  belong  to  God. 


214   '  The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

More  than  many  you  were  born  His  child.  You 
cannot  escape  His  love." 

So  different  in  external  methods,  there  was  a 
deep  resemblance  between  the  two  men,  the  re- 
semblance that  all  holy  and  strenuous  men  bear 
to  each  other. 

So  Wasteneys  made  an  important  new  friend, 
and  so  it  seemed  that  he  saw  once  more  the  mys- 
terious guiding  hand  in  his  life.  From  this  time 
he  seldom  spent  a  Sunday  in  town  without  drink- 
ing at  the  bracing  wells  of  the  great  preacher's 
eloquent  faith ;  and,  in  addition,  he  became  a  wel- 
comed guest  at  the  great  preacher's  house,  a  famil- 
iar of  his  book-lined  study,  which  resounded  often 
with  the  alternating  clash  and  mirth  of  vigorous 
debate.  His  first  impulse  to  embrace  the  preach- 
er's faith  and  calling  died  away,  as  he  realized  the 
intellectual  difficulties  it  involved ;  but  his  chance 
dropping-in  upon  that  Wesleyan  chapel  was  far 
from  being  in  vain.  Father  Selden's  prophecy 
was  coming  true.  In  the  maze  of  life  his  appar- 
ently erratic  wanderings  were  bringing  him  nearer 
and  nearer  to  the  one  way  out  —  the  Way  of  the 
Spirit.  There  were  many  by-ways  leading  into 
that  great  high-road.  Father  Selden  pointed  to 
one,  the  preacher  to  another.  Wasteneys  felt  that 
there  was  still  another  by-way  —  his  own.  It 
seems  strange  that  when  men  clearly  see  that  they 


Religion  to  the  Rescue  215 

are  travelling  to  the  same  destination  they  should 
be  so  fastidious  about  their  particular  route.  But 
so  it  is,  and  thus,  alas !  the  dearest  friends  have 
travelled  a  whole  lifetime  in  painful  estrangement 
from  each  other,  though  both  were  surely  journey- 
ing by  different  roads  to  the  City  of  God. 


CHAPTER    XXVII 

SISTER  CATHERINE  UPON   ROSE-GARDENS 

GOODNESS!  We  have  seen  that  one  of 
the  results  of  Wasteneys'  possession  was 
that  he  early  shrank  from  good  people. 
They  were  so  serious  !  It  was  a  sign  of  his  re- 
turning health  that  the  great  charm  for  him  of 
the  people  amongst  whom  he  had  been  brought  by 
his  accidental  encounter  with  the  preacher  was 
their  wonderfully  attractive  goodness.  For  all  these 
years,  beauty  —  that  is  the  world  as  revealed  to 
the  delighted  eye  of  the  senses  —  had  been  for 
him  his  standard  of  life.  Now  he  was  beginning 
to  feel  that  goodness  was  even  more  beautiful  than 
beauty;  and  the  purpose  in  these  good  people, 
the  fruitfully  directed  purpose  in  their  lives,  stirred 
within  him  an  emulative  desire  once  more  to  live 
his  life  energetically  to  fine  issues. 

Yes !  how  good  they  were,  and  what  a  divine 
pity  it  must  be  that  sustained  them  in  lives  of  such 
arduous,  yet  so  light-hearted  self-sacrifice.  He 
had  never  met  any  people  so  happy  as  these  who 
literally  had  not  a  moment  of  time  to  call  their 


Sister  Catherine  217 

own.  And  several  of  the  sisters  had  given  up 
homes  of  delicate  comfort  to  live  in  slums  where 
every  sense  was  jarred  from  morning  till  night; 
places  painful  alike  to  sight  and  sound  and  smell, 
and  places  inexpressibly  painful  to  the  finer  senses 
of  the  soul.  Sometimes,  Wasteneys  felt  a  longing 
to  join  in  the  work  they  were  doing,  on  its  purely 
social  side.  If  other  duties  might  seem  doubtful, 
there  could  be  no  doubt  of  the  Tightness  of  allevi- 
ating human  misery,  of  lightening  human  darkness. 
If  this  was  not  his  special  call,  at  least  he  might, 
in  some  humble  practical  way,  be  assisting  in  that, 
while  the  special  call  became  clearer. 

Sister  Catherine  smiled  when  he  confided  to  her, 
somewhat  shyly,  his  thought. 

"  Come  and  try  by  all  means,"  she  said,  "  but 
you  need  n't  be  unhappy  if  you  don't  feel  at  home 
in  the  work,  after  all.  I  think  you  have  another 
work  to  do." 

"  How  do  you  mean?  " 

"  Well,  your  mission,  so  to  say,  is  to  the  classes, 
rather  than  —  like  mine  —  to  the  masses.  But 
come  and  read  to  my  match-girls  some  evening 
and  try.  They  love  poetry  —  particularly  Brown- 
ing; and  I  am  making  them  quite  interested  in 
Maeterlinck !  " 

This,  of  course,  was  only  half  serious.  Sister 
Catherine  was  too  practical  a  missionary  to  think 


2i  8     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

much  of  rose-water  as  a  means  of  salvation,  though 
she  realized  that  it  had  its  uses  sometimes,  and  she 
applied  it,  with  no  little  success,  to  the  more  sensi- 
tive natures  coming  under  her  care.  For  she  was 
a  great  believer  in  the  essential  refinement  of  the 
average  human  creature. 

Wasteneys  never  summoned  up  courage  to  face 
Sister  Catherine's  match-girls,  but  he  would  some- 
times seek  her  for  tea  and  a  talk  in  her  workman's 
dwelling. 

The  connoisseur  in  human  misery  and  degrada- 
tion could  not  have  found  a  place  more  favorable 
for  his  melancholy  studies.  On  his  first  visit 
Wasteneys  had  some  difficulty  in  discovering  Sis- 
ter Catherine's  building.  He  sought  information 
of  a  sad,  bloated  woman,  who  was  carrying  a  jug 
of  beer  from  a  public  house,  which  was  a  remark- 
able example  of  the  sensitiveness  to  ignoble  use 
even  of  brick  and  wood  and  three  coats  of  paint. 
In  nothing  is  the  mysterious  power  of  the  invisi- 
ble over  the  visible  so  clearly  seen  as  the  effect  of 
human  habitation  upon  the  very  material  of  which 
our  houses  are  built.  Clean,  strenuous,  living  re- 
sults in  a  stately  old  house  like  Wasteneys'.  What 
a  different  tale  was  told  by  every  house  in  that 
street,  but  particularly  the  grimy  leering  front  of 
"  The  Jolly  Fellows."  Even  by  charming  streams, 
where  the  water  runs  clear  and  the  green  leaves 


Sister  Catherine  219 

ripple,  the  place  where  the  beasts  come  to  drink 
is  always  miry  with  the  tread  of  hoofs. 

But  to  return : 

"You  go  down  to  the  mews  yonder,"  said  the 
woman,  "and  turn  to  the  left,  just  before  you 
come  to  the  coffin  factory." 

The  coffin  factory!  "The  Jolly  Fellows,"  and 
the  coffin  factory !  Such  were  the  two  extremes 
between  which  Sister  Catherine  had  chosen  to 
live  her  life.  He  thought  of  his  grassy  garden 
at  Wasteneys,  its  green  shadows,  its  luxuriously 
grouped  trees,  its  azalea-scented  air.  Into  that 
garden  came  no  sounds  save  the  call  and  call  and 
call  again  of  the  cuckoo,  or  the  chiming  of  the 
village  clock;  and  all  day  long  clean  clover- 
breathed  winds  fanned  it  with  freshness. 

The  coffin  factory!  There  was  ignominy  too 
both  towards  life  and  death  in  thus  compelling 
the  twain  to  live,  as  it  were,  side  by  side  in  this 
gruesome  ludicrous  fashion.  It  must  mar  the 
proper  solemnity  of  the  thought  of  death  in  the 
minds  of  the  living,  as  surely  it  must  unduly 
overshadow  existences  with  at  best  but  little 
sunlit  margin.  Life  must  be  dreary  enough  in 
"Jones's  Rents,"  without  its  being  thus  further 
darkened  with  so  grim  an  industry.  To  Was- 
teneys it  seemed  now  as  if  that  street  was  pre- 
sided over  by  a  grinning  skeleton  —  but,  of 


220     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

course,  such  thoughts  troubled  little  the  heads, 
say,  of  the  woman  who  guided  him,  or  of  the 
children  playing  within  sound  of  the  screaming 
circular  saws,  that,  from  gaslit  dawn  till  gaslit 
eve,  cut  out  the  cheap  wooden  shrouds.  Such 
thoughts  were  only  for  people  who  lived  in  gar- 
dens, and  were  buried  in  marble  vaults.  Even 
the  last  luxury  of  appreciating  their  degradation 
is  denied  to  the  poor.  Wasteneys  wondered  if 
he  was  not  perhaps  a  little  over-sensitive  to  live 
the  life  of  a  philanthropic  worker.  Yet,  the 
flower  of  Sister  Catherine's  face  managed  to  keep 
as  bright  and  pure  amid  it  all,  as  if  it  had  been 
washed  in  May  dew. 

Her  little  kitchen  was  a  wonderful  contrast  to 
its  grim,  unsavory  surroundings.  Here  again 
was  another  illustration  of  the  influence  of  the 
invisible  human  spirit  upon  its  surroundings. 
Literally  a  workman's  kitchen,  with  an  open 
grate  and  oven,  and  a  dresser  or  plate  shelf,  and 
two  or  three  rough  chairs.  Yet  how  fresh  and 
pure,  and  even  distinguished,  it  looked.  Sister 
Catherine,  who  evidently  luxuriated  in  asceti- 
cism, allowed  herself  no  other  luxuries  —  not 
even  a  comfortable  chair.  Wasteneys  wondered, 
as  he  looked  at  her  face,  which  was  a  little  over- 
wrought, whether  she  allowed  herself  even  such 
necessities  as  sufficient  food  and  sleep.  He 


Sister  Catherine  221 

thought  too  as  he  looked  round  the  little  kitchen, 
severe  as  a  monk's  cell,  of  the  strange  diversity 
of  human  nature.  On  one  hand  were  men  and 
women  seeking  to  gratify  their  senses  by  every 
possible  device  of  novel  indulgence;  on  the  other 
there  were  men  and  women  who  found  their  satis- 
faction in  denying  themselves  systematically  all 
the  others  so  greedily  sought.  He  could  not 
help  smiling  to  himself.  How  absurd  human 
nature  was,  even  its  idealisms.  Then  his  eye 
fell  upon  Sister  Catherine's  little  bookshelf: 
Blake,  Emerson,  Shelley,  Edward  Carpenter, 
Maeterlinck. 

Ah! 

Starry  food  —  all  of  it. 

A  playful  application  of  a  profound  line  of 
Lucretius  occurred  to  him  as  he  noted  the  food 
of  this  starry  little  woman. 

"  Unde  cether  sidera  pascit  ?"  he  said,  laughing. 

"Translate,  please,"  said  Sister  Catherine. 

"  O,  only  something  about  '  on  what  does  the 
ether  feed  the  stars?'  I  was  thinking  of  your 
books,  the  food  of  stars !  " 

"You  mustn't  pay  compliments.  It's  never 
done,  I  assure  you,  in  Jones's  Rents." 

No  indeed !  and  at  the  moment  there  plainly 
came  to  their  ears  the  moaning  of  the  steam 
saws  turning  out  the  poor  man's  coffins. 


222     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

Wasteneys  took  down  "Wisdom  and  Destiny," 
and  his  eye  fell  upon  a  passage  of  peculiar  fitness 
to  the  moment :  "  Indeed,  if  we  had  only  the  cour- 
age to  listen  to  the  simplest,  the  nearest,  most 
pressing  voice  of  our  conscience,  and  be  deaf  to 
all  else,  it  were  doubtless  our  solitary  duty  to 
relieve  the  suffering  about  us  to  the  greatest 
extent  in  our  power.  It  were  incumbent  upon 
us  to  visit  and  nurse  the  poor,  to  console  the 
afflicted ;  to  found  model  factories,  surgeries,  dis- 
pensaries, or  at  least  to  devote  ourselves,  as 
men  of  science  do,  to  wresting  from  nature  the 
material  secrets  which  are  most  essential  to  man. 
But  yet,  were  the  world  at  a  given  moment  to 
contain  only  persons  thus  actively  engaged  in 
helping  each  other,  and  none  venturesome  enough 
to  dare  snatch  leisure  for  research  in  other  direc- 
tions, then  could  this  charitable  labor  not  long 
endure;  for  all  that  is  best  in  the  good  that  at 
this  day  is  being  done  round  about  us  was  con- 
ceived in  the  spirit  of  one  of  those  who  neglected, 
it  may  be,  many  an  urgent,  immediate  duty  in 
order  to  think,  to  commune  with  themselves,  in 
order  to  speak.  Does  it  follow  that  they  did  the 
best  that  was  to  be  done?  To  such  a  question  as 
this  who  shall  dare  to  reply?  The  soul  that  is 
meekly  honest  must  ever  consider  the  simplest, 
the  nearest  duty  to  be  the  best  of  all  things  it  can 


Sister  Catherine  223 

do;  but  yet  were  there  cause  for  regret  had  all 
men  for  all  time  restricted  themselves  to  the 
duty  that  lay  nearest  at  hand.  In  each  genera- 
tion some  men  have  existed  who  held  in  all 
loyalty  that  they  fulfilled  the  duty  of  the  pass- 
ing hour  by  pondering  on  those  of  the  hour  to 
come.  Most  thinkers  will  say  that  these  men 
were  right." 

Wasteneys  pointed  the  passage  out  to  Sister 
Catherine. 

"Don't  you  think  the  philosopher  excuses  him- 
self a  little  lamely  for  hastening  back  to  his  own 
quiet  pursuits,  instead  of  taking  his  place  in  the 
hospital  of  human  suffering?  'Thinkers'  will 
agree,  he  says.  Of  course.  Thinkers  naturally 
back  thinkers.  And  what  a  delightful  euphe- 
mism is  that  word  '  venturesome  ' !  " 

"But  surely  he  is  right?  We  have  each  one 
our  work,  and,  however  much  we  may  wish,  we 
can  do  no  other." 

"  Of  course,  I  know  that  that  is  the  flattering 
unction  which  artists  and  philosophers  lay  to 
their  souls.  Yet  I  confess  I  am  inclined  to 
think  the  human  importance  which  they  attach 
to  their  work  is  only  a  sop  to  their  consciences, 
only  a  grand  way  of  excusing  a  selfish  indulgence. 
It  is  true  that  a  philosopher  may  be  serving  man- 
kind, as  he  walks  to  and  fro  his  grassy  Academe, 


224     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

and  ponders  to  the  song  of  the  birds  —  but,  at  all 
events,  it  is  a  very  pleasant  way  of  serving  man- 
kind. Philosophy!  Poetry!  what  are  they  worth, 
compared  with  good  surgery  and  good  nursing? 
All  the  philosophers  and  poets  that  ever  lived 
have  done  nothing  for  humanity  compared  with 
the  man  who  discovered  chloroform." 

"  But  you  forget  that  all  ways  of  serving  man- 
kind are  pleasant.  Else,  I  'm  afraid  no  one 
would  serve." 

"That  sounds  cynical,  does  n't  it?  " 

"I  suppose  it  does.  Yet  you  wouldn't  have 
people  doing  work  for  which  they  are  unfitted? 
—  and  in  work  fitness  and  pleasure  always  go 
together.  Do  you  think  the  man  who  discovered 
chloroform  would  ever  have  found  it  unless  it  had 
been  a  passion  with  him  to  find  it  —  unless  he  had 
been  a  born  doctor,  and  took  as  positive  and  per- 
sonal —  self-indulgent  —  pleasure  in  relieving  hu- 
man pain  as  others  seem  to  take  in  causing  it?  " 

"  No  doubt  that  is  true,  but,  all  the  same,  you 
cannot  deny  that  a  larger  proportion  of  self- 
sacrifice  enters  into  some  professions  than  into 
others,  and  equally  it  would  seem  a  large  amount 
of  practical  human  usefulness.  Doctors  and 
nurses,  no  doubt,  enjoy  their  sleep  as  well  as 
other  human  beings,  but  how  ready  they  are  to 
give  it  up  at  the  call  of  human  suffering." 


Sister  Catherine  225 

"  Of  course,  you  cannot  enjoy  a  pleasure  with- 
out paying  something  for  it.  One  has  to  choose. 
Would  you  say  that  a  poet's  life  holds  no  sacri- 
fices ?  " 

"  Well,  at  all  events,  they  have  told  us  enough 
about  them,"  said  Wasteneys. 

"You  are  hard  on  your  own  calling,"  said  Sis- 
ter Catherine.  "You  talk  of  anaesthetics.  You 
forget  what  a  wonderful  spiritual  anaesthetic  is 
a  good  book." 

"  O,  I  know !  A  poet  is  a  sort  of  nerve-doctor, 
if  you  like.  He  can  help  people  who  imagine 
they  are  ill,  and  sit  at  home  nursing  their  petty 
spiritual  ailments.  But  I  envy  the  man  who  can 
stop  a  real  pain,  a  pain  that  makes  the  poor  tor- 
tured body  scream  out  in  agony,  or  the  woman 
who  brings  bread  to  the  starving,  or  takes  little 
lonely  frightened  children  and  makes  them  happy. 
They  are  doing  the  real  useful  work,  the  good 
work." 

"  You  have  a  work  no  less  useful,  no  less  real. 
Believe  me,  that  you  would  only  waste  your  time 
trying  to  do  another's  work.  My  work,  for  in- 
stance, little  as  it  is  —  you  could  n't  do  it  —  no 
more  than  I  could  do  yours." 

"I  should  love  to  try." 

"Would  you  like  to  live  in  a  place  like  this? 
Could  you,  even?  Answer  me  candidly." 

15 


226     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"  Surely  I  could  do  it,  if  you  can. " 

"  No,  that  is  not  an  answer.  This  is  my  work, 
and  in  a  true  sense  I  would  rather  live  here  than 
anywhere  else ;  that  is,  taking  my  nature  all  round, 
this  life  gives  it  its  fullest  satisfaction." 

The  sound  of  the  coffin-saw  wailed  on  in  the 
distance. 

"I  'm  afraid,  after  all,  I  could  n't,"  he  said. 

"But  you  needn't  be  unhappy  about  that,"  said 
Sister  Catherine,  after  a  pause;  "there  must  be 
some  men  to  look  after  the  rose-gardens. 

"  You  are  in  danger  of  laying  too  much  stress 
on  self-sacrifice,"  she  continued.  "Some  help 
the  world  that  way  —  though  there  is  much  less 
self-sacrifice,  and  far  more  self-indulgence,  in 
such  work  than  you  think  of  —  but  others  help 
it  by  self -fulfilment.  I  mean  that  some  help  the 
world  by  doing  without,  and  others  help  it  by  en- 
joying everything  within  their  reach.  Though, 
indeed,  doing  without  is  for  some  natures  a  part 
of  self-fulfilment.  Then  again,  you  must  remem- 
ber that  to  relieve  pain  is  not  the  only  way  of 
making  men  and  women  happy.  There  is  the 
other  way  —  that  of  definitely  adding  to  their  joy. 
The  man  who  invented  anaesthetics  was  indeed  a 
benefactor  to  the  race,  but  the  man  who  grows 
roses  in  his  country  garden  and  sends  them  to 


Sister  Catherine  227 

a  hospital  is  no  less  a  friend  of  human  suffering. 
The  poet  who  expresses  the  joy  of  life  in  a  lyric, 
or  the  philosopher  who  concentrates  his  vision 
of  the  ultimate  good  of  things  in  some  bracing 
essay,  is  surely  doing  the  world's  work,  like  any 
other  worker,  and,  because  his  work  may  seem 
more  easy  and  pleasant,  he  must  not  fall  out  with 
it  on  that  account. 

"Yes!  there  must  be  some  men  to  look  after 
the  rose-gardens.  That  may  be  the  gardener's 
form  of  self-sacrifice  —  to  accept  the  burden  of 
enjoying  and  singing,  while  his  heart  all  the 
time  cries  out  against  his  own  security  and  yearns 
to  join  the  sufferers  in  the  darkness  outside  his 
gate.  He  will  help  them  best  by  staying  in  his 
garden  and  singing  with  a  light  heart  among  his 
roses.  So  they  too  will  walk  in  the  garden." 

"Ah,  it  is  an  easy  way." 

"  Perhaps  not  so  easy  after  all.  Roses  do  not 
grow  of  themselves.  They  need  much  care. 
Have  you  thought  of  that  —  thought  how  sweet 
the  soil  must  be  kept,  how  the  roses  must  be 
pruned,  and  trained  and  protected  from  blight? 
You  speak  of  the  unselfish  care  of  doctors  and 
nurses,  but  believe  me  that  a  really  beautiful 
rose  needs  as  much  care  as  a  wound." 

Wasteneys'  face  grew  a  little  sad.  He  had 
neglected  his  rose-garden. 


228     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"  You  had  forgotten  that  ?  "  said  Sister  Cath- 
erine, gently. 

"I  'm  afraid  I  had,"  he  answered. 

"Then  think  of  the  responsibility  of  the  man 
to  whom  a  rose-garden  has  been  given.  How 
careful  he  must  be  not  to  fail  in  his  trust,  not  to 
neglect  his  garden,  not  to  allow  it  to  lie  idle  and 
devoured  by  weeds.  But  there  is  even  a  greater 
danger  than  neglect.  He  may  forget  that  the 
garden  was  given  to  grow  roses  in,  and,  out  of 
the  evil  of  his  heart,  just  to  indulge  a  dark  fancy, 
he  may  grow  beautiful  evil  things  in  his  garden, 
poison-flowers  instead  of  roses." 

"  Yes,  he  must  be  a  good  man  —  the  man  who 
grows  the  roses,"  said  Wasteneys,  with  a  sigh. 

"  He  is,  and  will  be,  and  he  will  grow  more 
wonderful  roses  than  he  has  yet  dreamed  of." 

"  You  really  believe  that  ?  " 

"I  do." 

He  seemed  to  hear  an  echo  of  Adeline's  voice: 
"  But,  of  course,  he  is  a  real  king  in  the  end,  he 
must  be  a  real  king." 

"  Alas !  You  don't  know  how  he  has  neglected 
the  garden." 

"Never  mind,  the  gardener  will  work  all  the 
harder  for  that.  Perhaps  he  had  to  forget  his 
garden  for  a  time  that  he  might  value  it  the  more 
when  he  came  back  to  it. " 


Sister  Catherine  229 

"  How  good  you  are !  And  how  strangely  you 
understand." 

"  Hush !  .  .  .  I  am  not  good.  I  love  roses, 
and  I  am  only  making  friends  with  the  gardener. 
Mind  you  bring  me  a  rose,  dear  gardener,  next 
time  you  come  to  Jones's  Rents." 

So  Sister  Catherine  contributed  her  share  in 
the  saving  of  one  more  soul. 

"How  good  women  are!"  he  said  to  himself, 
as  he  walked  home,  quite  forgetting  that  he  had 
recently  cursed  them  in  St.  James's  Park. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 

VICTORY  IN   SIGHT 

"  IT"   "W~  E  must  be  good  —  the  man  who  grows 

I 1  the  roses  !  "     At  all  events,  he  must  be 

-^-  -*-  serious.  He  must  take  rose-growing 
seriously. 

Roses!  He  found  himself  humming:  "I  shall 
never  again  be  friends  with  roses,"  and  then, 
having,  to  speak  the  truth,  forgotten  it  for  many 
days,  he  opened  his  manuscript  volume  and  wrote 
therein  to  this  effect : 

"  World  that  once  was  a  garden  — 

Where  is  the  Rose  ? 
Where  has  the  Nightingale  gone? 

It  has  followed  the  Rose. 
Where  is  the  face  that  once  lit, 

Like  a  flower,  at  the  Nightingale's  song  ? 
Gone  with  the  Rose  and  the  Nightingale, 

Gone  with  the  song." 

But,  though  he  was  rather  pleased  with  these 
lines,  he  realized  that  their  sincerity,  so  to  say, 
was  retrospective.  He  no  longer  felt  quite  like 
that.  Indeed,  the  world  was  once  more  becom- 


Victory  in  Sight  231 

ing  a  garden.  If  the  roses  were  scarcely  budding 
as  yet,  he  realized  that  they  were  still  alive. 
The  winter  had  not  killed  them,  after  all.  And 
if  the  roses  came  back,  the  nightingales  must 
follow.  But  what  of 

"  the  face  that  once  lit, 
Like  a  flower,  at  the  Nightingale's  song  ?  " 

Well,  who  knows !  Perhaps  he  had  been  mis- 
taken in  thinking  that  the  world  held  only  one 
beautiful  face. 

At  the  same  time,  Wasteneys  well  knew  that 
it  was  to  no  face  that  he  was  to  owe  his  emanci- 
pation, if  that  emancipation  was  ever  to  come 
about.  His  imperious  possession  was  to  be  cast 
out  by  no  rival  possession.  He  knew  that  in  any 
strife  of  faces,  there  would  never  for  him,  as  long 
as  he  lived,  be  any  face  that  would  seem  more 
lovely  than  the  face  of  Meriel.  He  could  not, 
would  not,  rob  that  face  of  its  beauty;  he  was 
determined  only  to  rob  it  of  its  power  over  his 
life.  This  he  had  willed,  vaguely  and  brokenly 
indeed;  but,  however  feebly  we  will,  if  we  will 
really,  good  or  bad  powers  of  the  air  hasten  to 
help  us  —  and  we  have  seen  how  Wasteneys  was 
being  helped.  He  was  being  helped  by  the 
reawakening  in  himself  of  divine  forgotten  in- 
stincts, instincts  that  forbade  him  any  longer 


232     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

to  treat  his  life  merely  as  his  own;  to  use,  or 
waste,  or  give  away,  as  he  pleased.  Larger  laws 
of  his  nature  were  reasserting  themselves,  to 
which  even  Meriel  must  bow.  Like  some  states- 
man, who  dare  not  wreck  his  country  for  a  mis- 
tress's smile,  so  Wasteneys  slowly  realized  once 
more  his  duties  to  his  own  soul. 

He  was  a  man,  he  was  an  artist,  he  was  —  per- 
haps —  an  eternal  spirit,  liable  to  render  an  account 
of  his  stewardship  before  the  throne  of  some  mys- 
terious Lord  of  Life,  who,  having  given  all,  had 
surely  a  right  to  demand  something  in  return. 

One  owed  it  even  as  a  courtesy  to  the  Divine 
Unknown  to  make  some  little  of  this  beautiful 
gift  of  life.  Yes !  Life  was  beautiful  —  beauti- 
ful, in  spite  of  all.  Of  course,  it  was  beautiful ! 
It  was  the  merest  priggishness  of  pessimism  to 
deny  it. 

Life  —  without  Meriel  ?  Yes !  O,  apostasy ! 
—  life  without  Meriel ! 

Thus  it  seemed  in  some  moments  that  the 
battle  was  ended;  and  the  reader  might  well 
imagine  that  this  history  might  now  make  a  con- 
siderate conclusion  on  the  spot.  May  the  his- 
torian remark,  as  an  excuse  for  its  necessary 
continuation,  that  the  hero  is  now  evidently 
enskying  himself  on  very  lofty  pinnacles  indeed, 


Victory  in  Sight  233 

and  that,  therefore,  as  he  is  not  yet  quite  at  the 

top,  there  may  presently  be well,  a  fall.     It 

is  not  anticipated  that  he  will  fall  to  the  very 
bottom  of  the  precipice  —  and  yet,  one  can  never 
tell! 


CHAPTER   XXIX 

THE  WATERS   OF  FORGETFULNESS 

IN  the  matter  of  resolution  much  depends 
upon  your  avoiding  anything  likely  to  break 
down  your  resolution.  If  you  possess  the 
portrait  of  some  one  that  you  don't  want  to  love, 
but  do  love  —  keep  it  in  a  drawer ;  if  you  have 
a  packet  of  letters  locked  away  —  throw  the  key 
into  the  river.  If  you  have  work  to  do,  and  a 
bottle  of  old  wine  is  likely  to  tempt  you  at  dinner 
—  don't  let  it  be  brought  to  table.  We  poor 
human  beings  pride  ourselves,  amusingly,  upon 
what  we  call  our  free  will,  and  yet  there  is  per- 
haps nothing  in  creation  more  at  the  mercy  of 
external  influences  than  man.  There  is  no  im- 
portant part  of  us  that  cannot  be  influenced  by 
powers,  vegetable  and  mineral,  of  which  every 
village  doctor  knows  the  properties.  Little  herbs 
that  grow  in  the  meadows  can  turn  our  brains, 
can  fill  us  with  a  fever  of  loving,  or,  with  a  little 
yellow  juice,  stop  forever  the  beat  of  our  ambi- 
tious hearts.  The  spirits  that  live  in  crystals 
and  the  virtues  that  belong  to  soft-colored  earths 
are  quick  to  brighten  or  deaden  the  soul;  and, 


The  Waters  of  Forgetfulness      235 

indeed,  all  we  are  and  do  is  actually  the  result 
of  the  co-operation  of  innumerable  and  often 
indefinable  forces  —  including  the  very  humblest. 
An  extra  cup  of  tea,  a  glass  of  wine  too  little, 
or  a  forgotten  pilule  of  energizing  chemical,  may 
decide  one's  fate.  There  is  nothing  too  humble 
to  be  counted  in  that  mysterious  collaboration 
called  a  human  deed.  If  a  man  does  during  the 
day  what  he  sets  out  to  do  in  the  morning,  he 
does  it  only  by  rigid  attention  to  those  influences 
which  he  has  learnt  to  know  can  alone  fulfil 
what  he  is  pleased  to  call  his  intention!  If  he 
neglects,  or  attempts  to  substitute,  one  of  them, 
he  jeopardizes  his  whole  purpose.  Let  him  look 
into  no  unexpected  eyes  —  for  a  sudden  face  at  a 
corner  may  ruin  all.  Let  him  shut  eyes  and  ears 
to  every  sight  and  sound  not  in  the  day's  reckon- 
ing. Only  so  shall  he  escape  alive  at  the  day's 
end  into  the  arms  of  his  purpose. 

Nothing  would  be  easier  for  a  man  who  knew 
his  friend,  and  who  was  at  the  same  time  properly 
skilled,  to  set  himself  to  defeat  any  of  his  friend's 
early-morning  resolves  by  a  clever  arrangement 
of  distracting  influences.  A  book  left  open  at 
a  certain  place,  a  song  hummed  at  a  given 
moment,  a  drink  a  propos,  a  handkerchief  faintly 
scented  with  a  past  that  you  chance  to  know 
of. 


236     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

What  an  art  there  is  lying  here  as  yet  unformu- 
lated,  a  terrible  art  —  and  yet  as  capable  of  beau- 
tiful, as  of  sinister,  employment.  As  Wasteneys 
looked  back  upon  his  history,  he  seemed  to  see 
that  the  life  which  he  had  flattered  himself  had 
been  of  his  own  strenuous  making  had  actually 
been  as  helpless  as  the  unfolding  of  a  flower.  It 
is  true  that  we  have  just  seen  him  deliberately 
willing,  and  so  far  succeeding  in,  a  certain  course 
of  action.  He  had  willed  to  be  free  of  Meriel. 
Actually,  life,  when  it  had  first  wrapped  up  his 
various  fateful  characteristics  in  a  little  magical 
seed,  had  never  for  a  moment  intended  him  to 
be  Meriel' s  slave,  except  for  so  long  as  was  nec- 
essary for  one  of  its  unfolding  processes. 

But,  of  course,  Wasteneys  did  n't  know  that. 
That  is  where  nature  is  at  once  so  kind  and 
so  unkind  with  us.  She  pretends,  the  Great 
Mother,  that,  children-like,  we  are  walking  all 
by  ourselves,  and  we  have  no  idea  that  she  is 
secretly  supporting  us,  and  directing  our  foot- 
steps, all  the  time. 

Will  —  did  Wasteneys  say?  Did  he  really  flat- 
ter himself  that  it  was  his  will  that  had  been  help- 
ing him  in  this  battle?  I  suppose  that  sometimes 
he  did  —  particularly  as  week  after  week  went  by 
without  his  giving  Meriel  even  a  thought.  So  an 
explosive  will  lie  quiet  for  years,  and  one  might 


The  Waters  of  Forgetfulness     237 

even  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  had  lost  its 
explosive  qualities,  a  harmless  handful  of  black 
dust.  One  might  even  try  it  with  a  match,  secure 
in  its  long  idleness.  Wise  people  don't !  Wise 
people  are  so  clever  !  But,  alas  !  an  unwise  human 
man,  inclined  to  be  happy  that  he  (he !)  is  getting 
the  best  of  some  powerful  malign  influence  in  his 
life,  is  all  too  likely  to  gratify  himself  by  putting 
his  security  to  the  test. 

It  was  weeks,  indeed  months,  since  Wasteneys 
had  unlocked  that  ebony  shrine.  He  told  himself 
that  he  really  did  not  care  about  looking  at  Meriel's 
face  any  more,  and  there  was  a  certain  measure  of 
pure  untroubled  forgetfulness  of  that  shrine  before 
which  the  candles  had  long  been  extinguished, 
and  the  white  roses  withered.  There  were  days 
on  which  he  forgot  Meriel  entirely  —  which  was 
terrible.  Sometimes  when  this  forgetfulness  was 
brought  home  to  him  he  thought  he  was  very 
unhappy,  but,  mixed  with  his  unhappiness,  was  a 
certain  exultation  at  his  growing  power  of  resis- 
tance. So  out  of  sheer  confidence  he  circled 
round  the  explosive,  and  in  one  rash  moment 
decided  that  it  was  really  no  explosive  at  all. 
Anyhow,  he  was  eager  to  try  the  experiment,  and 
so,  one  night,  radiant  with  self-reliance,  he  turned 
the  key  in  the  Renaissance  cabinet  and  looked 
again  at  the  face. 


238     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

His  willy  did  -.we  say  ?  He  was  willing  now 
with  all  his  might,  as  he  looked  at  Meriel  —  but 
he  might  as  well  have  pitted  his  will  against 
chloroform  as  against  Mend's  face.  What  was  all 
this  he  had  been  thinking  and  saying  to  himself? 
Anger,  pride,  religion,  his  duty  towards  the  cosmic 
scheme  —  Heaven  save  us  !  —  were  all  very  well 
for  theoretical  warfare;  but,  when  Meriel  herself 
appeared  on  the  field  of  battle,  where  were  they? 
Before  that  beauty,  and  the  joy  of  beholding  it, 
will  and  duty  and  all  such  abstractions  fell  to 
ashes.  Here  was  his  joy  —  let  him  will  or  think 
what  he  liked ;  and  though,  thanks  to  the  powers 
unknown  that  were  helping  him,  he  was  deter- 
mined to  win,  none  the  less,  he  realized  that  it 
was  to  be  a  negative  victory  —  a  victory  that  his 
immediate  self  would  rather  not  have  gained  —  a 
victory  indeed  that  he  must  win  for  something  in 
himself  which  expressed  itself  to  him  rather  as 
duty  than  as  joy.  Meriel  still  remained  for  him 
the  one  thing  in  life  he  wanted  !  He  was  engaged 
in  delicately  rearing  other  life  instincts,  with  con- 
siderable success ;  but  he  could  not  truthfully  say 
that  any  one  of  them,  or  that  they  all  together, 
possessed  any  such  vitality  as  his  love  for  Meriel. 
He  must  be  a  "  King,"  and  a  King  he  would  be, 
but,  without  the  love  of  Meriel,  to  be  anything  at 
all  seemed  foolish  and  unprofitable.  A  child  may 


The  Waters  of  Forgetfulness      239 

seriously  feel  that  too  much  confectionery  is  bad 
for  it,  and  restrain  its  appetite  accordingly,  but  it 
is  no  use  pretending  that  it  prefers  spelling,  or 
that,  however  successfully  he  may  spell,  whatever 
school-crowns  he  may  wear,  spelling  will  ever  take 
the  place  of  the  surreptitious  sweetmeat.  Yet,  as 
childish  habits  of  luxury  have  to  be  held  in  check, 
if  the  child  is  to  grow  into  the  man ;  so,  it  would 
appear,  the  luxurious  fancies  of  the  grown-up 
man  and  woman  must  be  disregarded,  if  that  man 
or  women  has  serious  intentions  of  becoming  an 
angel. 

Ah !  but  such  images  are  inadequate,  perhaps 
even  disrespectful  —  and  yet,  maybe,  they  are  not 
so  inadequate  after  all,  for  there  is  nothing  more 
mysterious  than  the  palate,  and  its  various  music. 
There  is,  seriously  speaking,  no  profounder  mys- 
tery presented  to  us  than  the  taste  and  distaste 
for  olives.  Heaven,  as  we  remarked  on  an  early 
page  of  this  book,  is  a  personal  matter  —  on 
which  other  people's  criticism  is  irrelevant  —  not 
to  speak  of  its  being  discourteous. 

No,  we  do  many  things  in  this  life  that,  when,  with 
no  little  effort,  they  are  done,  we  are  glad,  even 
proud,  of;  but  which,  personally,  we  would  not 
have  chosen  to  do.  We  really  wanted  to  do 
something  else,  wanted  to  do  it  with  all  our  hearts 
—  but  nature,  taking  no  account  of  our  personal 


240     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

wishes,  intent  only  on  her  own  plans,  insisted  on 
our  doing  this  beautiful  "  self-sacrificing  "  thing ! 

Wasteneys  was  determined  (so  nature  bade 
him!)  forcibly  to  banish  Meriel  from  his  life. 
He  still  loved  her  —  must  always  love  her,  in  a 
sense  —  yet  he  was  determined  to  put  an  end  to 
her  power. 

But  the  agony  of  it !  As  he  looked  at  her  face 
again,  it  seemed  as  if  these  last  months,  with  their 
impressive  resolutions,  had  meant  nothing.  His 
longing  for  her  was  as  keen  and  simple  as  at  the 
beginning.  What  were  all  these  substitutes  that 
he  had  been  carefully  nurturing?  In  his  heart  he 
knew  that  there  was  no  duty  or  ambition  that 
could  for  a  moment  withstand  one  look  of  Meriel's 
eyes.  And  as  he  realized  this,  the  old  longing 
came  over  him  to  see  her  again,  the  old  wild  hope 
possessed  him.  At  last,  maybe,  she  was  a  simple 
human  woman.  After  all,  she  was  so  young !  He 
had  not  sufficiently  remembered  that.  He  saw 
her  once  more  in  the  strange  morning  light,  in  all 
the  bloom  of  her  young  womanhood.  For  him 
she  still  remained  "  the  miracle  "  —  the  miracle 
that  only  befalls  once  in  a  life  for  man  or  woman. 
Other  women  might  be  beautiful  and  noble  too, 
might  make  far  better  wives  than  Meriel,  but  their 
gifts  and  qualities  were  human,  whereas  Meriel 
was  superhuman.  She  was  the  miracle-woman  in 


The  Waters  of  Forgetfulness      241 

Wasteneys'  life,  and  in  the  mere  thought  of  her 
was  all  the  wonder  of  the  world. 

"  O,  she  is  my  joy  —  my  joy!  "  he  cried,  strug- 
gling hard  with  memories  and  longings.  He  did 
not  know  of  Adeline's  prayer :  "  O  keep  him  good, 
and  give  him  his  joy  "  —  a  prayer  about  answer- 
ing which  nature  had  her  own  ideas.  Yet,  though 
in  the  fierce  fire  of  his  longing  all  his  newly- 
gained  strength  seemed  to  melt  like  wax,  enough 
was  left  to  make  him  determined  to  conquer.  He 
would  not  go  back  to  Meriel,  though  his  heart 
broke  with  staying  away.  Could  it  be  that  she 
was  calling  him  again?  Was  all  this  suddenly 
awakened  pain  the  mysterious  answer  of  his  heart 
to  the  far  music  of  her  violin  ? 

No,  no !  He  would  not  listen.  Whatever  it 
cost  him,  he  would  forget.  Forget !  he  laughed 
savagely  as  he  fought  with  his  longing  like  a 
great  coiling  snake.  Forget ! 

It  was  in  such  a  moment  that  he  came  upon 
the  gipsy's  packet  of  forgetfulness,  which  he  had 
tossed  into  a  drawer  of  his  desk  with  an  incredu- 
lous smile.  He  smiled  again  as  he  rediscovered 
it ;  but,  like  some  one  in  physical  agony,  he  was  in 
the  mood  to  try  anything,  however  fantastic,  that 
promised  to  ease  awhile  the  cruel  aching  of  his 
heart.  He  undid  the  packet.  It  was  absurd  and 
yet  —  who  knows  ?  Besides,  the  white  powder, 

16 


242     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

the  gipsy  had  said,  was  to  be  mixed  in  with  wine. 
The  wine  alone  might  help.  He  had  heard  men 
talk  of  drowning  their  troubles  in  wine.  Had  he 
not  seen  them  doing  it?  ...  and  a  thrill  of  horror 
passed  through  him,  at  a  memory  of  "  Coleridge's  " 
old  haunt.  A  more  gracious  memory  intervened 
in  the  verse  of  one  who  had  professed  much  com- 
fort in  wine : 

"  And  lately,  by  the  Tavern  Door  agape, 
Came  shining  through  the  Dusk  an  Angel  Shape 

Bearing  a  Vessel  on  his  Shoulder ;  and 
He  bid  me  taste  of  it ;  and  't  was  —  the  Grape  !  " 

Yes !  in  all  ages,  there  had  been  men  who  had 
found  peace  in  wine  —  ah !  but  what  a  peace ! 
And  what  a  cowardly  running  away !  Better  the 
pain  a  hundred  times.  No,  no,  no  !  —  and  yet  — 
the  pain  !  O,  Meriel ! 

Cowardice  or  not — O,  the  pain! — he  would 
bear  it  no  more :  this  unfathomable  loneliness  of 
the  heart.  No  one  dreamed  it  cowardice  to  shelter 
the  bodily  senses  from  pain  with  numbing  drugs. 
Why  then  should  it  be  cowardly  to  seek  an  anaes- 
thetic for  the  suffering  of  the  soul? 

So  it  was  that,  pulled  this  way  and  that,  he  at 
last  ended  the  struggle,  and  set  his  lips  to  the 
waters  of  forgetfulness. 


CHAPTER    XXX 

ADELINE  AS   DEPUTY-MOTHER 

SPRING  had  come  again,  and  Adeline  Wood 
was  sitting  over  some  "  mending "  in  her 
sister's  Surrey  garden.  It  was  a  bright 
April  afternoon,  suddenly  warm  as  summer,  and 
near  her  her  two  young  charges  were  playing  in 
the  sun :  Harold,  a  boy  of  four,  already  experi- 
enced in  the  management  of  toy  railways,  and 
the  movements  of  large  bodies  of  tin  horse  and 
foot;  and  Agnes,  a  mysterious  mite  of  sixteen 
months,  rapidly  assimilating  the  various  human 
formulae,  and  already  knowing  a  good  deal  more 
than  she  was  able  to  put  into  words.  Words, 
however,  were  coming  fast,  and  one  word  she  said 
in  a  way  that  wrung  poor  Adeline's  heart  with  a 
joy  that  was  half  pain.  It  was  the  word  "  Auntie." 
When  she  called  "  Aunt-ie,"  in  her  little  childish 
quaver,  Adeline  would  pick  her  up  and  strain 
her  to  her  bosom  with  a  passion  that  an  obser- 
vant eye  might  have  found  full  of  pathos.  If 
"  Auntie  "  were  so  sweet,  how  wonderful  it  must 
be  to  hear  a  little  creature  say  "  Mother "  —  or 


244     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

"  '  Mammy  '  I  suppose  they  say  to  real  mothers," 
Adeline  surmised. 

Along  with  the  joy  of  her  deputy  motherhood, 
Adeline  was  beginning  to  understand  and  antici- 
pate the  peculiar  sorrow  of  nurses,  of  childless 
women  who  give  all  their  warm  mother-love  to 
another  woman's  child,  only  in  the  sure  irresistible 
course  of  time  to  be  torn  from  it,  with  a  cold 
check  to  heal  their  bleeding  hearts.  In  a  sense 
the  nurse's  profession  is  a  peculiarly  tragic  form  of 
prostitution.  The  nurse  sells  her  mother-love  for 
money,  as  another  woman  sells  her  wifehood ; 
both  being  the  slaves  of  an  unjust  society.  For 
many  months  now  Adeline  had  known  the  nurse's 
joys.  With  a  shiver,  she  realized  that  she  was 
soon  to  experience  the  nurse's  sorrow,  for  her 
sister  was  coming  home  —  and  "  I  am  sure,"  the 
sister  had  written,  "  you  are  longing  to  be  back  at 
your  book-binding." 

Book-binding !  How  little  mothers  seem  to 
understand  their  blessedness  —  how  little  under- 
standing they  seem  to  have  of  the  hearts  of  child- 
less ones  whose  ears  are  "  filled  with  the  murmur 
of  rocking  cradles."  How  complacently  the  happy 
married  sister,  with  her  home  and  her  husband 
and  her  children,  regards  the  lot  of  her  unmarried 
sisters,  and,  with  the  best  will  in  the  world,  con- 
gratulates them  on  their  —  book-binding !  One 


Adeline  as  Deputy-Mother        245 

sister,  maybe,  is  earning  quite  a  big  salary  as  a 
high-school  teacher,  another  perhaps  is  doing  well 
in  an  office  —  and  so  on.  How  lucky  for  them! 
"  But  you — you,"  one  can  imagine  the  high-school 
teacher,  and  the  clerk,  exclaiming  in  a  moment  of 
feeling:  "  You  are  a  mother!  You  have  fulfilled 
yourself  as  a  woman.  We  have  failed.  We  only 
hang  on  to  existence  by  doing  man's  work.  Book- 
binding !  High-school  teaching  !  Type-writing ! 
Don't  you  understand  that  we  were  born  to  be 
mothers?  Mothers!  Mothers!" 

Yes !  Adeline's  heart  ached  as  she  watched  the 
moment  approaching  when  she  would  have  to  go 
back  to  her  book-binding.  How  dusty  and  lonely 
that  little  work-room  seemed  in  her  thoughts  —  for 
all  its  Adams  ceiling.  There  were  moments  when 
she  felt  that  she  could  even  marry  a  stockbroker, 
and  settle  down  among  "  handsome  "  furniture  in 
some  horrible  suburban  villa  —  if  only,  if  only,  she 
might  have  a  little  child,  a  little  child,  that  no  one 
had  the  right  to  take  from  her.  So  distressingly 
had  Adeline  retrograded  from  her  early  intellec- 
tualism ;  with  one  result,  at  least,  that  must  be 
noted  —  she  was  all  the  prettier  for  it.  The  slight 
suggestion  of  the  woman's  rights  look  had  dis- 
appeared from  her  face,  which  had  also  grown 
rounder,  owing  to  country  air  and  regular  meals. 
Her  eyes  too  were  softer,  and  deep  in  them  slum- 


246     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

bered  a  warm  fire  that  had  never  been  there  before. 
Poor  Adeline !  Was  it  to  be  her  fate  quietly  to 
quench  those  fires,  and  by  degrees  put  off  her 
nurse's  apron  and  put  on  once  more  the  whole 
armor  of  bachelor  womanhood;  or  would  some 
one  come  along  to  meet  that  fire  with  answering 
fire,  and  would  there  some  day  leap  out  a  little 
white  flame  of  love  which  she  should  shield  in  her 
bosom  from  the  winds  of  life.  O,  would  the  lover 
come  who  should  whisper :  "  To-day  with  the 
rising  of  the  sun,  we  shall  make  his  blue  eyes; 
and  at  noon  we  shall  lie  together  and  make  his 
warm  heart ;  when  evening  comes  we  shall  mould 
his  rich  and  secret  mouth;  "  or:  "Beloved,  some- 
day we  will  lie  all  moon-naked  on  the  top  of  the 
world,  and  from  our  lips  shall  rise  an  incense 
which  shall  presently  break  into  a  little  soft  ascend- 
ing star." 

This  afternoon  her  "  mending "  had  been  mo- 
mentarily forgotten,  and  her  eyes  were  bright 
with  such  dreams,  as  a  servant  came  across  the 
grass  bearing  a  card  upon  a  tray.  She  took  it 
up  absently,  then  blushed  with  a  great  wave  of 
feeling.  Wasteneys  had  taken  it  into  his  head  to 
run  down  and  surprise  her  at  her  nursing.  Was- 
teneys had  indeed  been  rather  surprisingly  the 
sport  of  fancies  and  sudden  impulse  of  late.  This 
was  one  of  the  good  impulses. 


Adeline  as  Deputy-Mother        247 

"  O  yes !  "  she  exclaimed,  possibly  betraying 
her  delight  to  the  maid,  "  please  ask  Mr.  Waste- 
neys  to  come  into  the  garden." 

"  Why !  how  well  you  are  looking  !  "  exclaimed 
Wasteneys,  with  really  something  of  surprise  in 
his  voice,  as  they  shook  hands. 

"  You  say  it  as  if  you  had  never  seen  me  look 
well  before,"  she  replied,  blushing  again,  and  not 
without  some  inkling  of  what  he  had  meant.  He 
meant:  "  How  much  prettier  you  look  than  I  have 
ever  seen  you  look  before  —  and  something  else 
too,"  but  he  answered :  "  Well,  I  don't  think  I 
ever  saw  you  look  well  quite  in  the  same  way  — 
if  the  remark  is  not  too  stupid." 

"Never  mind  me.  But  how  are  you?  You 
don't  look  too  well,  I  'm  sorry  to  say.  What 
have  you  been  doing  with  yourself?  You  look 
tired." 

And  she  looked  anxiously  into  his  face,  but 
seeing  something  there  that  she  felt  she  ought  not 
to  question,  she  took  the  opportunity  of  Agnes's 
toppling  approach  to  turn  away  and  leave  the 
question  unanswered.  Agnes  came  up  calling 
"Aunt-ie"  in  her  most  heartbreaking  way,  and, 
of  course,  had  to  be  hugged  on  the  spot.  Then 
she  was  introduced  to  Wasteneys,  who,  though  he 
lacked  the  violent  arts  of  childish  entertainment, 
had  a  quiet  way  of  attracting  the  childish  atten- 


248     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

tion  which  would  no  doubt  develop  into  more 
articulate  and  formulated  methods  under  practice. 
At  present  his  methods  were  very  humble  and 
limited,  but,  such  as  they  were,  they  sufficed  soon 
to  win  for  him  the  shy  friendship  of  both  Agnes 
and  Harold.  Harold,  who  was  learning  botany 
as  well  as  tin  soldiers,  presently  asked  his  opinion 
as  to  the  name  of  a  flower  growing  in  the  meadow, 
with  the  result  that  all  repaired  thither,  Agnes 
enthroned  on  Wasteneys'  shoulder,  the  sad  man 
having  become  a  light-hearted  "  gee-gee  "  for  the 
occasion,  a  gee-gee  urged  across  the  meadow  by 
a  spirited  switch  in  the  hands  of  Harold.  The 
flower  duly  found  and  named,  Wasteneys  took  the 
driver  on  to  his  other  shoulder,  and  so  all  returned 
to  the  lawn  in  triumph. 

A  nurse  presently  taking  the  children  away, 
Adeline  and  Wasteneys  were  left  to  their  grown-up 
interests — though  indeed  the  thoughts  of  neither 
strayed  very  far  from  the  children.  Both  secretly 
desired  to  be  again  with  the  children,  for  the 
children  protected  them  from  each  other,  saved 
them  from  a  self-revelation  which  each  was  desir- 
ing, yet  fearing.  It  was  not  till  they  were  in  the 
nursery  that  they  were  real  again.  This  was  at 
bed-time,  when,  Adeline  explained,  she  was  ex- 
pected to  sing  certain  little  songs  of  her  own 
making  which  had  attained  a  great  nursery  popu- 


Adeline  as  Deputy-Mother       249 

larity.  Wasteneys  begged  leave  ta  be  present. 
Poor  Adeline !  It  was  too  bad.  Yet  Wasteneys 
begged  hard,  and  then  perhaps  deep  down  in  her 
heart  she  was  not  unwilling  that  he  should  see 
what  a  good  mother  she  could  make.  Harold, 
although  four  and  a  man,  did  not  hold  aloof 
from  this  child's  hour  as  might  be  expected,  but 
entered  with  great  simplicity  and  gusto  into  the 
revels. 

The  reader  unfamiliar  with  their  charm  may  wish 
to  be  spared  an  account  of  these  revels ;  while  the 
reader  whom  happy  nightly  experiences  have  made 
familiar  with  them  will  not  need  to  be  told.  Be- 
tween the  two  readers,  the  writer  may  conveniently 
escape  a  difficult  task.  But  he  is  of  opinion  that 
no  harm  can  be  done  from  including  one  of 
Adeline's  little  baby  songs — which  have  a  rele- 
vancy in  this  history  in  that  they  moved  Wasteneys 
as  the  very  greatest  poetry  had  long  failed  to  do, 
and  filled  his  eyes  with  surreptitious,  but  not 
wholly  unrecorded,  tears. 

Here  was  Adeline's  latest  jingle  for  Agnes,  and, 
of  course,  it  had  a  witching  tune  to  it,  also  of 
Adeline's  making,  which,  had  you  been  Agnes  — 
or  Wasteneys !  —  you  would  wish  to  go  on  for- 
ever, and  without  which  the  words  sound  flat  and 
unmusical.  It  will  be  seen  too  that  the  lines  lent 
themselves  to  that  literal  farm-yard  imitation  which 


250     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

is  the  surest  way.  to  a  child's  heart.  (If  you  can 
really  crow  like  a  cock,  or  grunt  like  a  pig,  your 
fortune  is  made  in  any  nursery.)  But  here  is 
Adeline's  poem: 

"  O  where  has  baby  been  to-day  ! 
And  what  has  baby  seen  to-day ! 
She  saw  the  Moo-Cow,  and  she  heard 
The  pretty  little  Dicky-Bird, 
She  heard  the  Cock-a-doodle-doo, 
She  heard  the  Pussy-Cat  say  '  Mew,' 
She  heard  the  Donkey  say  '  Hee-Haw  '  — 
So  much  and  more  she  heard  and  saw. 
She  also  heard  the  Gee-Gee  neigh  — 
O  baby,  what  a  busy  day  !  " 

Does  the  reader  smile  —  smile  the  smile  of  the 
superior  person — at  Adeline,  for  making  such 
nonsense,  at  Wasteneys  for  appreciating  it  (actually 
with  tears  in  his  eyes !)  and,  most  of  all,  at  the 
writer  who  records  it?  All  the  same,  it  is  in  such 
nonsense  that  man  is  happy. 

"  O  Lord,  by  these  things  men  live,  and  in  all 
these  things  is  the  life  of  my  spirit.  .  .  ." 

As  Wasteneys  watched  Adeline,  a  voice  in  his 
heart  broke  through  the  bonds  of  silence,  and 
insisted  on  being  heard. 

"  Why  !  I  love  her  !  "  he  suddenly  said  to  him- 
self. "  How  good  she  is  !  —  how  beautiful !  "  But 
immediately  a  jailer  voice  within  his  soul  was 


Adeline  as  Deputy-Mother       251 

heard  sternly  commanding  the  escaped  thought  to 
its  prison : 

"  No,  you  do  not.  You  love  me  —  only  me. 
There  is  no  joy  in  life  for  you,  except  me." 

So  spake  the  Enthroned  Superstition  in  his 
soul — but  a  thought  that  has  once  escaped  into 
utterance  will  escape  again.  After  all,  Nature  is  a 
tremendous  ally,  and  Nature  had  her  plans  for 
these  two  people.  It  was  not  for  nothing  that  the 
voices  of  children  were  growing  to  seem  sweeter 
and  sweeter  in  the  ears  of  both. 

"  A  mother  of  little  human  babes  !  "  Even  when 
Meriel  had  been  by,  Wasteneys  had  been  conscious 
of  that  deep  need  of  his  nature.  Alas !  Meriel 
could  never  be  that  for  him — and  more  and  more 
the  mysterious  Love  of  the  Child  was  growing 
within  him.  A  few  days  ago,  unobserved  at  his 
windows,  he  had  watched  the  village  lads  playing 
cricket  on  the  green.  How  he  had  loved  their 
gayety,  their  absurd  exuberant  antics,  their  prank- 
ish inexhaustible  vitality.  Why  had  he  suddenly 
burst  into  tears  as  he  watched  them?  Could  it  be 
that  he  had  no  little  son  of  his  own? 

Of  course,  the  thought  —  intellectually  speak- 
ing —  was  absurd ;  entirely  against  the  dictates  of 
reason  —  for  who  but  a  madman  would  desire  to 
bring  into  existence  a  being  of  voracious  appetites 
which  can  only  be  fed  at  one's  own  heart,  a  beak  of 


252     The  Love- Letters  of  the  King 

young  needs  that  pecks  vigorously  at  one's  purse, 
and,  as  soon  as  it  develops  a  voice,  fills  the  old 
nest  with  its  domineering  notes  —  heir  to  the 
eternal  illusion  that  the  world  was  made  for  it,  and 
it  alone?  Yet,  here  again  Nature  tricks  us.  The 
tragedy  of  motherhood  has  been  the  theme  of 
poets  and  philosophers  since  the  beginning,  and, 
if  all  the  world  were  wise,  there  would  be  no  such 
foolish  thing  as  a  mother  and  father  to  be  found  on 
this  planet.  One  can  only  hope  that  mothers  and 
fathers  get  some  pleasure  out  of  their  parenthood. 
Perhaps,  after  all,  the  pelican  loves  to  give  its  own 
blood  to  its  young  —  who  can  doubt  it?  —  and,  if  no 
young  come  tapping  at  its  breast,  considers  itself 
a  disappointed  bird.  This  seems  to  be  as  good  an 
explanation  as  any  other  of  the  mysterious  con- 
tinuance of  parents  on  this  planet. 

Before  Wasteneys  left  to  catch  his  town-train 
that  night,  he  asked,  with  a  blush  that  might  have 
been  Adeline's : 

"  Do  you  think  I  could  —  could  —  see  them  — 
—  asleep?  " 

O  what  a  happy  girl  he  was  making  Adeline ! 

Yes !  He  saw  them  asleep ;  and,  as  Adeline 
and  he  bent  over  Agnes's  cot,  and  loved  the 
chubby  little  determined  face,  he  said  softly,  half 
to  himself: 

"  So  this  is  a  little  child !     A  little  child !  " 


Adeline  as  Deputy-Mother       253 

"  Yes  !  a  little  child,"  echoed  Adeline,  "  is  n't  it 
wonderful?" 

And  then  they"  had  looked  at  each  other  with 
strange  eyes,  and  held  each  other's  hands  a 
moment  over  that  sturdy  little  sleeper  —  who  no 
doubt  was  dreaming  of  "  gee-gees,"  or,  if  her  sleep 
were  fortunate,  of  pigs. 

An  hour  later,  Adeline  came  and  kissed  them 
softly.  He  had  not  kissed  her,  but  he  had  kissed 
them.  So  Adeline  had  become  a  perilously  happy 
girl. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

IN  WHICH   MERIEL   CALLS   ONCE  MORE 

YES  !  it  was  a  perilous  happiness  for  Adeline, 
for,  like  most  joys,  it  was  made  of  hopes, 
and  waiting  for  Wasteneys  at  his  rooms  in 
St.  James's  Street  was  a  letter  very  dangerous  for 
those  hopes.  After  all  this  silence,  one  more  of 
the  old  Commands ! 

"  Come  to  me.  I  am  lonely;'  ran  the  selfish  little 
note. 

The  mere  sight  of  Meriel's  handwriting  always 
made  Wasteneys'  heart  beat  as  though  it  would 
break,  and  indeed  it  beat  now,  but  he  was  a  little 
surprised  to  notice  that  there  was  comparatively 
little  of  the  old  joy  in  the  beating.  Indeed,  the 
main  pulse  of  it  was  a  curiously  different  feeling. 
Elation  there  certainly  was.  He  was  glad,  glad,  of 
this  letter,  but  glad  in  a  queer  fierce  way  —  glad, 
it  might  almost  seem  with  anger. 

"  Yes !  I  will  come,"  he  said,  almost  fiercely, 
"  be  sure  I  will  come." 

I  have  said  that  for  some  time  Wasteneys  had 
been  subject  to  sudden  fantastic  impulses.  Many 
of  them  came  to  nothing,  owing  to  a  saving  indo- 


Meriel  Calls  once  More          255 

lence  of  nature.  A  mere  passing  thought  would 
sometimes  glow  gigantically  into  a  fully  equipped 
purpose,  and  then  as  suddenly  fade  back  again 
into  nothingness.  It  mattered  not  how  wild  the 
thought  —  it  was  a  serious  matter  for  the  moment. 
In  such  a  mood  he  had  renewed  once  more  his 
intercourse  with  Daffodil  Mendoza,  under  an  amus- 
ing impression  that  there  was  peace  for  him  in  her 
arms :  the  simple  elemental  woman !  In  such  a 
mood  he  had  sought  Sister  Catherine  and  asked 
her  to  marry  him,  glowing,  as  he  was  at  the  mo- 
ment, with  a  dream  of  joint  spiritual  work  together ; 
a  combined  slum  and  rose-garden,  one  may  sup- 
pose !  Fortunately  for  both,  Sister  Catherine  was 
obliged  to  confess  that  her  heart  was  elsewhere. 
In  her  work?  Well,  not  entirely.  In  such  a  mood 
he  had  violently  reopened  the  old  love-story  with 
Myrtle,  and  received  in  exchange  many  letters  of 
great  literary  beauty. 

These  were  the  most  harmless  of  his  fancies,  but 
there  were  others  which  were  less  innocent,  and 
two  especially  which  held  him  with  a  dark  fas- 
cination. He  was  growing  more  and  more  super- 
stitious, he,  who  had  once  been  a  very  prig  of 
rationalism !  —  and  he  found  himself  giving  heed 
to  hints  and  indications,  to  dreams  and  omens  and 
warnings,  which  before  he  would  have  brushed 
aside,  or  indeed  never  have  remarked  at  all.  Had 


256     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

the  gipsy  mingled  madness  in  the  drink  she  had 
given  him?  Was  it  Death,  after  all,  that  waited 
for  him  —  and  for  Her !  —  in  the  Waters  of  For- 
getfulness  ? 

Death,  for  him  —  and  for  her :  that  was  the 
thought  that  was  more  and  more  possessing  him. 
We  have  seen  how  he  was  impressed  by  that 
strange  paper  of  the  Vivisection  Novelist.  Even 
before  that,  once  or  twice,  his  unformulated  resent- 
ment had,  so  to  say,  vaguely  fondled  a  revolver. 
His  reason  had  laughed  him  to  scorn.  Let  him 
make  an  end  of  his  own  life  if  he  pleased.  But 
why  should  she  lose  hers  —  merely  because  her 
nature  was  different  from  his?  The  point  of  view 
was  preposterous.  So  said  reason,  but  instinct 
went  on  fondling  the  revolver.  Presently  instinct 
even  began  to  reason  —  absurdly  as  instinct  will. 
She  loved  him.  That  she  confessed.  That  is  she 
was  his,  and  he  was  hers.  Their  lives  were  indis- 
soluble. She  belonged  to  him,  as  he  to  her.  But 
he  was  lord  —  so  said  Nature.  The  man  was  the 
ruler.  His  will  must  prevail.  She  loved  him,  and 
yet  she  denied  him  her  love,  toyed  with  him,  tor- 
tured him,  profaned  and  wasted  the  marvel  that 
life  had  given  them,  saw  his  life  turned  to  dust  for 
her  sake,  yet  felt  no  shame  —  tried  no  way  to  help 
it  —  dreamed  idly  by  the  sea :  an  idle  woman  — 
needing  the  whip  ! 


Meriel  Calls  once  More          257 

The  whip  !  She  was  too  strong  for  that.  No 
small  mortal  whip  would  serve.  There  was  only 
one  whip  for  her  haughty  spirit  —  a  sudden  lash 
of  flame  on  her  white  breast.  Then  how  good  to 
lash  out  his  own  life  with  the  same  white  fire,  and 
lie  —  all  ended  for  both  of  them  —  by  her  side. 
The  gipsy's  words  often  came  to  his  mind :  "  It  is 
a  noble  way." 

This  was  the  dream  that  was  growing  danger- 
ously sweet  for  him,  as  day  by  day  he  drank  of  the 
Waters  of  Forgetfulness.  For  a  moment  he  had 
forgotten  it  as  he  had  stood  with  Adeline  over  the 
cradle  of  that  little  child ;  but,  when  he  reached 
home  that  night,  nerve-worn  with  the  various 
emotions  of  the  day,  and  found  that  letter  —  O, 
then  the  dream  suddenly  grew  a  giant  again,  and, 
as  Wasteneys  took  a  deep  draught  of  wine  from  a 
tray  that  glittered  in  the  waiting  lamplight,  he 
laughed  the  laughter  of  one  who  feels  that  the 
end  is  coming  at  length :  sad  or  glad,  what  matter, 
—  the  end,  and  being  the  end,  surely  glad  ! 

He  took  out  his  little  revolver  from  his  desk, 
and  fondled  it.  He  had  been  practising  with  it 
of  late,  and  two  cartridges  remained  in  it.  These 
he  carefully  drew.  It  must  not  go  off  by  mistake. 
No !  it  must  go  off  very  deliberately.  He  even 
dreamed  that  perhaps  Meriel  might  consent  to  her 
execution ;  see  that  it  was  just,  that  it  was  best, 

17 


258     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

that  it  was  even  the  only  happy  way  for  both  of 
them.  A  sentence  in  one  of  her  letters  came  to 
his  mind.  It  read  like  a  prophecy :  "  The  chill 
of  fairy  fingers  is  on  my  heart  —  the  chill  that 
ends  in  death." 

Replacing  the  revolver  in  his  desk,  he  turned 
to  look  for  his  Bradshaw.  She  wrote  from  some 
inaccessible  little  place  in  Provence. 

Provence !  It  sounded  like  Myrtle !  Trouba- 
dours, roses,  old  French !  Suppose  Meriel  after 
all  was  only  a  more  cunning  form  of  Myrtle? 
Had  his  deep  simple  feeling  been  fooled,  after  all, 
by  a  woman's  taste  for  the  decorative  in  human 
passion? 

Such  a  woman  would  hardly  be  worthy  of — 
death.  And,  yes,  yes  —  Meriel  was  worthy  of 
death.  So  Death  decided  on  the  ten  train  next 
morning  from  Victoria. 

Meanwhile,  Adeline  could  not  sleep  —  for 
dreaming. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE    LAST    JOURNEY 

THE  making  of  a  resolution  is  always 
invigorating,  but  no  resolution  is  so  in- 
vigorating as  the  resolution  to  make  an 
end,  to  come  to  conclusions  with  one's  destiny. 
When  at  last  a  man  says,  "  I  will  stand  it  no 
more,  "  and  really  means  it,  a  great  energy  passes 
into  him,  and  with  it  a  great  peace.  Wasteneys 
had  not  been  so  happy  for  many  months  as  he  was 
during  his  journey  south.  All  the  confusions  of 
his  life  were  soon  to  be  at  an  end,  all  the  wander- 
ings hither  and  thither,  all  the  misleading  hopes 
and  the  misconceived  endeavors.  The  power  of 
life  to  harm  was  soon  to  pass;  soon  he  would 
be  beyond  the  control  of  any  chance. 

"  Fear  no  more  the  heat  o'  the  sun 

Or  the  winter's  furious  rages. 
Thou  thy  worldly  task  has  done, 
Home  art  gone,  and  ta'en  thy  wages." 

His  journey  seemed  one  long  ecstasy  of  fare- 
well. Every  mile  he  travelled  was  a  good-by  to 
another  mile  of  earth.  It  was  strange  to  think  he 


260     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

would  never  see  London  again,  never  see  Paris, 
never  speed  through  these  vineyards  of  Central 
France  any  more  as  long  as  the  world  endured. 

And  for  Meriel,  too,  was  he  not  bringing  the 
gift  of  peace?  For  he  knew  that  their  love  had 
been  a  thing  of  pain  for  her  also,  a  broken  promise 
of  perfect  things.  If  she  had  failed  him,  he  no 
less  had  failed  her ;  and  yet  neither  could  win  free 
of  the  uncompleted  dream.  Imperfect  as  it  was, 
it  held  too  much  beauty  for  any  other  dream  to 
take  its  place.  There  was  only  one  way  of  bring- 
ing it  to  an  end,  and  in  that  moment  of  ending 
perhaps  the  dream  would  grow  suddenly  perfect, 
just  for  a  strange  moment  before  it  went  out 
forever. 

He  wondered  how  it  would  all  be,  and  involun- 
tarily he  pictured  their  meeting  —  then  suddenly 
her  fearful  terror  as  she  realized  his  mission.  He 
saw  her  look  frantically  this  way  and  that  as  if  to 
escape,  and  then  he  saw  all  the  wild  beating  of  her 
wings  quietly  subside  beneath  his  firm  eyes.  She 
had  sometimes  doubted  his  reality,  the  reality  of 
his  love,  now  she  would  know  that  he  was  real 
—  at  last  she  would  believe  in  his  love,  believe 
that  it  was  a  passion  no  less  transcendental,  no  less 
free  of  the  "  little  love  "of  earth,  than  her  own. 

So  with  unmoved  purpose,  and  with  the  tran- 
quillity of  the  sure  end  upon  him,  he  slept  peace- 


The  Last  Journey  261 

fully  through  the  last  few  hours  of  his  journey, 
opening  dreamy  eyes  a  moment  upon  a  phan- 
tasmal moonlit  Avignon,  and  arriving  at  Marseilles 
in  a  great  calm  of  dawn.  An  hour  or  two  later, 
he  found  himself  at  the  end  of  his  journey  in  one 
of  the  less  frequented  stations  of  the  Riviera; 
a  little  green  shelf  of  white  terraces  looking  through 
palm  trees  out  across  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 
Meriel  was  not  here,  but  in  a  little  rock  village 
of  the  hills  half-a-dozen  miles  away,  to  which 
this  was  the  nearest  point 

It  was  still  quite  early  in  the  day,  so  he  was 
glad  to  throw  himself  into  bed  and  finish  his 
interrupted  sleep. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

PHILOSOPHERS   OF  THE   BUTTERFLY 

LATER  in  the  day,  towards  the  end  of 
the  afternoon,  he  was  sitting  in  a  little 
cafe  overlooking  the  sea.  Near  him  two 
middle-aged  Englishmen  were  talking.  No  one 
else  was  in  the  cafe.  It  was  a  small  room 
and  Wasteneys  was  compelled  to  hear  their 
talk. 

"  I  saw  plenty  of  Cleopatra  up  on  the  golf 
ground,"  said  one  of  the  two  men. 

"  Any  Thais  ?  "  asked  the  other  man. 

"One  or  two." 

They  were  not  talking  about  women,  but  about 
butterflies,  as  Wasteneys,  an  old  entomologist, 
realized.  One  of  the  men  had  a  butterfly-net 
and  a  specimen  tin  at  his  side. 

Taking  advantage  presently  of  a  friendly  salu- 
tation on  the  part  of  these  botanists  of  the 
air,  Wasteneys,  to  show  that  he  was  free  of 
the  mystery,  hazarded  an  entomological  re- 
mark. 

"  Did  you  take  any  '  Aurore  de  Provence '  to- 


Philosophers  of  the  Butterfly      263 

day?"  he  asked,  "  I  have  an  old  affection  for  the 
fly." 

"Memories?"  said  one  of  the  men,  laughing 
pleasantly. 

"  Yes,  memories." 

"Ah!  butterflies  are  all  memories.  .  .  .  What 
do  you  say,  Willis?"  addressing  his  friend. 

"  Yes,  yes !  "  said  the  other,  "  anything  to  pass 
the  time.  Some  men  take  to  politics,  some  to 
butterflies.  Butterflies  are  least  trouble  —  and 
much  prettier." 

Then  the  man  who  had  first  spoken  passed  his 
collecting  tin  to  Wasteneys,  inviting  him  to  look  at 
his  day's  catch.  The  cork-lined  tin  was  filled  with 
what  at  first  sight  seemed  flowers,  with  pins  for 
stalks.  Each  pin  held  a  separate  species.  Some 
of  the  pins  were  crowded  with  rich  wings,  and 
all  were  arranged  with  the  exquisite  neatness  of 
the  collector.  Here  and  there  frail  limbs  twitched, 
and  a  wing  rose  and  sank  again.  But,  for  the 
most  part,  the  collector  had  been  merciful,  and 
the  cyanide  bottle  had  previously  put  them  beyond 
the  reach  of  any  pain. 

The  talk  then  became  a  general  comparing  of 
notes  —  species,  habitats  and  so  forth  —  and  Waste- 
neys' new  acquaintance  soon  took  up  an  attitude 
of  respect  to  him,  as  in  forgotten  cells  of  memory 
long-slumbering  knowledge  re-awakened,  and  one 


264     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

butterfly  after  another  came  back  to  him,  each 
with  its  syllabled  Latin  name.  As  they  talked,  an 
old  boyish  desire  awoke  within  him,  and  involun- 
tarily his  hand  reached  out  to  the  net  resting  on 
the  table. 

"  I  declare,  you  make  me  long  to  go  out  for  a 
day  on  the  hills  myself,"  he  said. 

"  Why  not?" 

"  Well,  for  one  thing,  I  have  no  net  .  .  .  and 
besides  I  have  no  time." 

His  mind  suddenly  recalled  him  to  his  pur- 
pose in  being  here  at  all.  Think  of  a  man  on 
such  an  errand  going  butterflying !  And  yet  — 
why  not?  Why  not  one  boyish  day  in  the  open 
air  before  the  —  long  night  ?  Nox  est  perpetua 
una  dormienda. 

"  As  for  the  net  —  and  in  fact  anything  you  want 
—  I  shall  be  happy  to  lend  them  to  you,"  said  the 
collector. 

"  But  will  you  think  me  unsociable  if  I  go 
off  alone?"  asked  Wasteneys.  "Memories,  you 
know?  " 

"Of course  not.  No  one  hunts  butterflies  with- 
out a  serious  cause.  I  take  it  that  all  butterfly 
hunters  —  chasseurs  des  papillons^  as  they  grandly 
call  us  here  —  are  sad  men,  who  make  a  profession 
of  trifles  to  hide.  .  .  .  O  well,  you  evidently  know 
all  about  it.  .  Eh,  Willis?" 


Philosophers  of  the  Butterfly      265 

"  Quite  so,"  answered,  Willis,  pouring  out  for 
himself  a  further  supply  of  brandy. 

So  it  was  settled,  and  with  the  morrow's  morn 
behold  Wasteneys  afoot,  with  butterfly  net  and 
knapsack  —  singing  —  singing ! 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 
"AURORE  DE  PROVENCE" 

WASTENEYS  had  awakened  early  to  a 
world  of  pure  gold.  A  vast  sunshine, 
and  the  Mediterranean,  veiled  as  yet 
in  mists  of  pale  violet.  Before  his  window  lay  a 
rich  plain,  gardens  in  which  this  happy  land  was 
growing  the  spring  for  the  rest  of  Europe :  "  vio- 
lettes  en  fairs  saisons"  palm  trees,  walls  of 
cypresses,  and  the  sea.  Behind  rose  dark  hills, 
terraced  with  olive-orchards,  and  swarthy  with 
forests  of  cork-oak ;  but,  hidden  within  their  huge 
arms,  green  valleys  and  running  rivers  and  the 
young  vine. 

Wasteneys'  way  lay  among  the  hills,  and,  as  he 
mounted  higher  and  higher,  and  the  sea  spread  out 
in  broader  spaces  beneath  him,  his  heart  seemed 
to  rise  with  his  ascending  feet  and  his  soul  to  grow 
cleansed  and  free.  Very  strange  is  the  influence 
of  height  and  great  spaces  on  the  soul.  It  would 
sometimes  seem  as  if  one  has  only  to  climb  high 
enough  —  and  to  stay  there  —  for  all  our  earthly 


"  Aurore  de  Provence"  267 

imperfections  and  weaknesses  to  fall  away.  The 
spirits  evil  and  heavy  that  weight  us  down  to  earth 
on  the  ordinary  levels  cannot  breathe  upon  the 
hills.  It  is  impossible  to  think  certain  weary 
thoughts  at  a  certain  altitude  —  they  belong  so 
exclusively  to  the  low-lands,  to  narrow  streets 
and  dark  rooms  of  the  town. 

It  was  already  summer  in  Provence.  To  open 
a  window  or  a  door  was  to  let  in  the  breath  of 
roses  like  a  tide  of  perfume,  and  the  nightingales 
were  busy  tuning  their  throats  in  the  thick-leaved 
gardens  —  not  yet  the  long  violin-like  calls,  only 
the  first  tentative  chucklings,  like  bubbles  rising 
from  still  unfathomable  seas. 

As  Wasteneys  passed  up  the  well-known  hillside, 
nature  was  playing  once  more  the  same  divine  tune 
she  had  played  when,  a  boy,  he  threaded  the  rocky 
orchard  paths  ten  years  before.  Not  a  note  was 
different ;  and  she  might  well  be  content  with  the 
old  music.  The  fig-trees,  that  had  looked  so  lifeless 
but  a  week  or  two  ago,  were  suddenly  holding  out 
large  green  hands.  Cistus,  white  and  red,  was 
feeding  in  great  flocks  at  the  morning  sun  —  at 
first  sight  bringing  one's  heart  into  one's  mouth, 
so  like  was  it  to  an  English  wild  rose.  Here  and 
there,  among  the  underbush,  neighbors  of  the 
holly-like  dwarf  oaks,  orchids,  ivory  and  velvet 
and  dew,  added  to  the  general  luxury;  and 


268     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

among  the  stones  the  asphodel  reared  its  steeples 
of  silver  stars. 

And  here !  —  ah !  surely  far  from  home  —  was 
an  English  hawthorn ! 

Flying  grasshoppers  suddenly  shot  across  into 
the  olives  with  a  dry  clatter  of  wings  like  dead 
leaves,  lizards  rustled  every  few  yards,  and  now 
and  again  some  innocent  little  snake  would  flash 
in  terrified  loops  into  the  grass.  Humming-bird 
hawk-moths  flickered  over  the  rocky  places,  and 
here  a  scarabeus  was  rolling  his  circular  house- 
hold to  some  suitable  burial  place.  Distinguished 
butterflies,  like  tiny  Japanese  fans,  came  and  went 
swiftly  on  the  breeze,  or  danced  together  in  pairs 
high  up  against  the  morning  sky. 

Presently  Wasteneys  made  his  first  swoop  with 
his  net. 

"  Charaxes  lasius  !  "  he  exclaimed  —  the  words 
coming  instantly  to  his  lips,  though  he  had  not 
used  them  for  ten  years.  A  large  handsome  fly, 
not  uncommon  around  there.  Deftly  taking  it 
from  the  net,  he  uncorked  the  cyanide  bottle. 
In  a  moment  the  lovely  wings  had  grown  weary, 
and  its  butterfly  joys  and  sorrows  were  at  an  end. 
He  thought  of  Meriel  as  he  watched  the  fair 
thing  die  —  for,  curiously,  it  was  to  a  great 
sumptuous  butterfly  that  he  had  compared  her  on 
his  first  vision  of  her  in  that  morning  meadow. 


"Aurora  de  Provence"  269 

Presently  he  lost  sight  of  the  sea,  as  the  rocky 
path,  cresting  the  hill,  turned  inland  into  a  world 
of  dark  rolling  hills,  which  at  first  sight  prom- 
ised nothing  but  the  evergreen  of  the  cork-oaks. 
As  one  walked  on,  however,  many  a  hidden  grassy 
place  became  revealed,  and  dingles  of  a  more 
spring-like  green.  Far  away  down  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  hills  the  eye  was  suddenly  gladdened 
by  what  at  the  distance  looked  like  an  avenue  of 
fountains  playing.  It  was  a  great  lane  of  plane 
trees  just  breaking  into  leaf,  and,  though  the 
house  was  yet  hidden,  Wasteneys  knew  that  it 
led  to  a  large  farmhouse  which  gathered  in  the 
riches  of  one  of  the  broad  valleys  opening  out 
among  the  hills.  The  wealth  of  that  valley  was 
chiefly  in  its  vines,  and  he  remembered  long  ago 
looking  with  awe  into  one  of  the  great  barns, 
cool  and  dark  and  smelling  of  wine,  where  the 
grape  was  stored  in  enormous  vats  and  barrels. 
A  large  genial  old  Frenchman,  whom  he  had 
thought  of  as  the  God  Bacchus  himself,  had 
come  out  as  he  peered  in,  and  offered  him  a 
draught  of  wine.  He  had  seen  it  drawn  from 
one  of  the  great  barrels,  and  he  remembered  still 
how  good  it  had  been,  fresh  and  pure  as  though 
it  had  just  been  drawn  from  the  earth  itself  —  as 
in  fact  it  had.  Wasteneys,  another  day,  had 
bought  a  whole  litre  bottle  of  it  for  forty  cen- 


270     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

times.  He  wondered  if  the  old  man  was  still 
there  —  for  it  was  upon  him  that  he  relied  for  the 
jug  of  wine  for  his  breakfast  in  the  wilderness. 

As  he  walked  on,  he  felt  as  happy  as  a  man 
who  has  just  come  out  of  prison.  The  world 
seemed  as  fresh  as  though  it  had  been  newly 
created.  Never  even  in  his  boyhood  had  he 
taken  more  sheer  simple  joy  in  the  sun  and  the 
breeze  and  the  woodland  loneliness.  In  a  dream 
he  wandered  on,  now  on  the  path,  and  now  drawn 
away  from  it  by  some  beckoning  gleam  of  the 
sun  suddenly  lighting  up  a  distant  flower,  or  by 
one  or  another  of  the  little  flitting  shapes  he  was 
ostensibly  hunting.  Only  entomologists  would 
be  interested  in  an  account  of  his  captures,  and 
to  himself  they  were  chiefly  interesting  for  their 
power  of  reminiscence.  Each  species  that  he 
was  able  to  name  brought  back  his  boyhood  the 
more  vividly,  and  he  was  surprised  to  find,  in 
spite  of  all  the  years,  how  easy  it  was  to  recap- 
ture this  old  boyish  satisfaction,  how  little  his 
intervening  experience  had  impaired  his  zest  in 
these  old  rambles  hand  in  hand  with  nature.  He 
was  still  the  old  nympholept  who  could  fall  into 
a  dream  over  an  effect  of  sunshine,  or  listen  by 
the  hour  to  the  sound  of  water  over  stones. 

Yes!  it  was  a  good  world,  and,  after  all,  was 
there  any  wound  nature  could  not  heal  if  only  we 


"Aurore  de  Provence"  271 

gave  her  time,  and  submitted  ourselves  more  con- 
stantly to  the  cleansing  streams  of  sun  and  air 
and  flowing  river?  One  could  almost  imagine 
even  physical  wounds  being  healed  by  the  mere 
touch  of  this  wonderful  southern  sun,  the  gentle 
surgery  of  this  golden  inexhaustible  god.  Waste- 
neys  recalled  with  shame  that  nature  had  offered 
him  healing  in  just  this  way  a  year  ago,  for  it 
would  soon  be  Easter  again;  and,  meanwhile, 
many  other  good  and  gentle  influences  had  come 
offering  to  make  him  whole.  In  spite  of  them 
all,  the  wound  was  still  open,  so  it  seemed  —  and 
during  this  last  winter  he  had  fallen  back  upon 
those  paltry  anodynes  which  he  knew  to  be  as 
powerless  as  they  were  unworthy.  He  was  dis- 
appointed, disgusted,  with  himself,  but  evidently 
the  wound  was  one  that  could  never  be  healed  — 
or  be  healed  only  in  one  way.  .  .  . 

As  his  thoughts  thus  wandered  into  the  shadows 
a  light  little  gleam  called  them  back  into  the  sun. 

" Aurore  de  Provence!"  exclaimed  the  stricken 

lover,  with  his  net  suddenly  alert  and  pursuing 

-but  his  reverie  had  been  indulged  too  long, 

and  the  little  speck  of  sun  escaped  the  cyanide 

for  that  day. 

After  three  or  four  hours'  wandering  among 
the  hills,  he  came  out  suddenly  at  last  upon  the 
avenue  of  plane  trees  —  and  there,  as  if  indeed 


272     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

his  boyhood  was  determined  to  come  back  in 
every  particular,  was  old  Bacchus  standing  in  his 
path,  superintending  the  swarming  of  a  hive  of 
bees  which  had  taken  a  fancy  to  cluster  in  a 
large  velvety  mass  on  one  of  the  knobs  of  the 
planes.  It  seemed  to  Wasteneys  that  the  old 
man  looked  exactly  as  he  had  last  seen  him,  for 
Bacchus  had  long  been  at  one  of  those  fortunate 
ages  when  ten  years  make  little  perceptible 
change  in  a  face.  He  was  still  an  old  firm  oak  of 
a  man,  and  Wasteneys  looked  at  him  with  envy 
and  some  shame.  So  it  was  to  have  lived  in 
accord  with  nature,  like  a  tree :  one  looked  in 
vain  upon  that  handsome  healthy  old  face  for 
traces  of  a  mind  diseased,  or  fancies  of  the  heart. 
This  excellent  old  man  had  done  his  duty  to  the 
universe  like  some  mighty  vegetable,  that  looks 
not  to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  but  just  grows  in 
obedience  to  the  cosmic  order.  So,  though  his 
girth  grew  larger,  no  young  tree  in  the  forest 
was  more  freshly  or  abundantly  vernal  than  this 
vast  old  man,  who  would  certainly  never  die  of 
old  age,  but  only  because  the  woodman  has  de- 
creed that  no  tree  can  go  on  growing  forever. 

So  once  more  Wasteneys  peered  into  the  great 
wine-smelling  barns,  and  once  more  became  the 
possessor  of  a  litre  of  the  purple  earth  wine  for 
forty  centimes.  By  this  time  it  was  close  on 


"  Aurore  de  Provence  "  273 

noon,  and  the  knapsack  was  growing  heavy  on 
the  shoulder.  It  creaked  pleasantly  with  its  new 
burden  of  the  wine,  and  Wasteneys  began  to 
look  on  grassy  corners  with  an  eye  to  breakfast. 
Presently  he  came  to  the  banks  of  a  happy  little 
river,  and,  in  a  meadow  thick  with  mauve  anem- 
ones, he  sat  him  down  with  his  back  to  a  shelter- 
ing tree,  and  the  river  running  deep  and  clear  at 
his  feet.  As  he  unpacked  his  knapsack,  he  grew 
trivial  with  elation : 

"A  Book  of  Verses  /"  he  exclaimed,  as  he  took 
the  first  series  of  "  Poems  and  Ballads  "  from  his 
knapsack. 

"  Underneath  the  Bough  "  —  a  sycamore. 

"A  Loaf  of  Bread" — a  pati,  French  rolls, 
Roquefort  cheese  and  two  oranges,  with  leaves 
on  them. 

"  A  Jug  of  Wine  "  —  at  forty  centimes  the  jug. 

"And  .   .   ." 

Wasteneys  stopped  a  moment  and  then  went  on 
laughing  — 

"  Ah  !  Wilderness  were  Paradise  enow. " 

Indeed,  it  was  a  wilderness  to  which  "Thou" 
had  been  almost  superfluous.  It  was  a  solitude 
so  satisfying  that  a  companion  would  have  been 
an  intrusion. 

He  spread  out  his  meal  neatly  before  him  and 
presently  fell  to  with  that  appetite  which  is  more 


274     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

than  half  our  joy  in  earthly  things.  When  the 
meal  was  finished,  he  rolled  himself  a  cigarette 
and  serenely  contemplated  the  green  world  about 
him,  lost  in  a  mighty  satisfaction.  Idly  he  had 
picked  up  his  Swinburne,  read  a  verse  or  two  of 
"  Felise,"  and  idly  let  it  slip  from  his  hand  again. 
But  some  lines  went  on  idly  singing  in  his  mind, 
the  words  of  the  only  English  poet  of  our  time 
who  has  written  words  worthy  to  be  set  to  music 
by  a  running  river.  He  said  them  over  to  him- 
self dreamily,  in  no  way  accenting  their  applica- 
tion to  his  own  story,  barely  indeed  conscious  of 
it,  so  deeply  charmed  was  he  by  the  various  wood 
magic,  lulled  by  all  the  murmurs  and  perfumes 
and  flecks  of  light  and  shade: 

"  We  played  at  bondsman  and  at  queen, 

But  as  the  days  change  men  change  too ; 
I  find  the  gray  sea's  notes  of  green, 
The  green  sea's  fervent  flakes  of  blue, 
More  fair  than  you. 

"  Your  beauty  is  not  over  fair 

Now  in  mine  eyes,  who  am  grown  up  wise. 
The  smell  of  flowers  in  all  your  hair 
Allures  not  now  ;  no  sigh  replies 
If  your  heart  sighs." 

And  then,  lying  with  half-closed  eye-lids,  just 
aware  of  the  murmur  of  the  bees,  like  a  golden 
harp-string  thrumming  in  the  sun,  he  found  him- 
self saying  to  himself  again  and  again : 


"  Aurora  de  Provence  "  275 

"  The  sweetest  name  that  ever  love 
Grew  weary  of." 

Then  he  forgot  all  except  the  hot  sun  and  the 
warm  scents  and  the  river.  Slowly  as  he  watched 
the  river  rippling  at  his  feet,  he  became  lost  to 
all  except  its  freshness  and  its  coolness  and  its 
merry  running.  One  by  one  his  senses  stole 
away  to  bathe  in  the  laughter  of  some  miniature 
rapids  that  made  most  of  the  music,  and  sud- 
denly, almost  before  he  realized  what  he  was 
doing,  he  found  his  body  undressing  and  on  its 
way  to  join  his  spirit  in  the  laughing  water! 
Merely  to  have  said  that  he  bathed,  like  any 
other  man  or  woman  might,  in  a  cool  river  on  a 
hot  summer  afternoon,  would  not  be  adequate  to 
the  occasion,  for  this  river  of  Provence  may  well 
seem  to  have  possessed  unusual  qualities.  The 
old  love-doctor,  it  may  be  recalled,  had  written 
of  "  a  river  in  Greece " :  "  that  if  any  Lover 
washed  himself  in  it,  by  a  secret  virtue  of  that 
water,  he  was  healed  of  Love's  torments."  Water 
indeed,  as  he  adds,  "  omni  auro  pretiosior. "  Had 
this  river  of  Provence  a  similar  occult  property? 
For,  as  Wasteneys  lay  in  the  rapids,  with  the 
boisterous  water  streaming  over  him,  conscious 
only  of  its  cool  ecstasy,  the  green  glory  of  sum- 
mer, and  the  brilliant  sky,  which  the  river 
seemed  to  have  brought  down  blue  and  warm  into 


276     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

his  very  arms,  a  marvellous  contentment  pos- 
sessed him ;  and  with  it  came  a  terrible  thought 
that  his  soul  dared  at  last  to  speak  aloud. 

"  Why !  you  are  happy !  Happy !  "  cried  his  soul. 

The  Enthroned  Superstition  frowned : 

"You  are  not  happy!  you  cannot  be  happy 
away  from  me." 

"  You  are  happy  —  can  you  deny  it  ? "  reiterated 
his  soul. 

A  breath  of  hawthorn  blew  so  sweetly  across 
from  the  river  bank  that  it  may  be  held  to 
have  intoxicated  him  into  making  his  amazing 
reply: 

"No!  I  cannot  deny  it,"  he  said,  suddenly 
sitting  up  in  the  water.  "I  cannot  deny  it.  I 
will  not  deny  it.  I  am  happy  —  quite  happy. 
Oh,  what  a  fool  I  have  been ! " 

And  then  he  gave  a  great  laugh  of  pure  joy, 
and  then  another  laugh  of  victory. 

"It  was  all  a  beautiful  disease,"  he  said,  "this 
river  has  washed  me  whole.  It  was  all  a  wilful 
fancy.  I  see  it  now." 

Once  more  he  lay  in  the  rushing  water  —  for 
that  moment  a  being  in  entire  harmony  with  the 
nature  of  which  he  was  a  part. 

"  How  dare  a  man  be  unhappy,"  he  said  to  him- 
self, "  while  this  sun  shines,  and  this  river  flows, 
and  all  these  green  leaves  are  his  friends?  " 


"Aurore  de  Provence"  277 

In  no  human  intercourse  he  had  known  had  so 
entire  a  satisfaction  possessed  him,  and  in  his 
consciousness  of  that  satisfaction  he  realized  that 
the  happy  human  life  is  that  which  is  independ- 
ent of  any  intermediate  human  being,  and  draws 
its  joy  direct  from  the  primal  springs  of  being. 
The  man  who  really  loves  the  sun  and  the  stars, 
the  rivers  of  the  water,  and  the  rivers  of  the  air 
rippling  the  green  leaves,  needs  no  other  friends, 
and  may  well  be  indifferent  to  the  kindness  or 
cruelty  of  the  fairest  woman.  The  great  swim- 
mer and  the  great  climber  know  an  ecstasy  of 
communion  with  the  elements  which  dwarfs  all 
their  sweetest  human  ties.  And  such  are  but 
special  examples  of  the  great  Earth-Passion,  of 
which  the  love  of  man  for  woman,  or  woman  for 
man,  is  but  a  function.  All  love  of  the  individ- 
ual, merely  as  the  individual,  is  limitation;  it  is 
only  in  the  love  of  the  whole  that  man  finds  the 
true  measure  of  himself  and  his  joy. 

"  Oh,  good,  good,  good  world ! "  he  shouted  to 
the  sun  and  the  river;  and  then,  spying  his  knap- 
sack on  the  river  side,  he  ran  laughing  up  the 
bank  and  took  from  it  —  that  absurd  revolver! 

From  sheer  glee  of  living  and  joy  that  he  was 
free,  he  emptied  its  six  chambers  into  the  sweet 
sky.  He  felt  glad  that  he  had  at  hand  so  elo- 
quent a  means  of  expressing  himself.  Then, 


278     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

with  a  shout,  h.e  threw  the  revolver  away  from 
him  with  all  his  might  —  so  that  it  fell  in  the 
deepest  part  of  the  river. 

Slowly  returning  to  the  necessity  of  a  more 
normal  behavior,  he  took  one  last  plunge  in  the 
river  and  dressed.  There  was  still  some  wine  in 
the  bottle,  and  he  drank  jubilantly  to  the  health 
of  the  sun.  Presently  the  joy  rhythm  in  his 
blood  insisted  on  humming  itself  into  words, 
something  after  this  fashion : 

"  All  the  loving  ever  done 
Is  not  so  sweet  as  the  kiss  o'  the  sun, 
Nor  a  woman  ever  born 
As  good  to  look  on  as  the  morn. 
Up,  my  soul,  and  let 's  away 
Over  the  hills  at  break  of  day, 
Following  whate'er  befalls 
Yonder  fairy  horn  that  calls, 
Angel-blown  in  yonder  star ; 
Better  far,  O  !  better  far, 
Better  far  than  any  girl, 
Is  the  morning's  face  of  pearl, 
And  the  wind  about  our  ears 
The  true  music  of  the  spheres, 
And  the  running  of  the  river 
Good  to  listen  to  forever." 

These  lines  prompted  a  final  piece  of  boyish- 
ness. The  empty  wine-bottle  had  suggested  his 
throwing  it  into  the  river  and  pelting  it  with 
stones  —  after  the  approved  manner  at  picnics. 


"Aurore  de  Provence  "          279 

But  he  thought  of  something  more  to  the  point. 
Taking  a  leaf  from  his  pocket-book  he  copied  out 
the  lines  he  had  just  written,  and  to  them  added 
these  lines,  which  he  had  once  written  in  an 
early  mood  of  rebellion: 

"  I  love  her  love  no  more.     I  would  have  died 
For  her  least  need,  but  of  her  cruel  whims 
I  am  no  slave.     Man  is  too  much  a  god 
To  worship  even  a  woman  utterly. 
This  let  one  woman  learn  and  one  man  teach. 
A  man  is  woman  and  a  man  besides, 
A  woman  only  woman." 

Placing  the  poetry  in  the  bottle,  he  secured  the 
cork  and  dropped  the  bottle  carefully  into  the 
main  stream.  Then,  taking  up  the  net,  he  went 
his  way  back,  singing  his  new  song. 

At  the  cabaret  he  found  the  two  entomologists 
at  their  afternoon  drink. 

"Any  luck?"  they  asked. 

"The  very  best,"  he  answered,  though  he  could 
not  explain  further. 

"  But  I  wanted  an  '  Aurore  de  Provence, '  and 
just  missed  one,"  he  presently  added. 

"Accept  one  from  me,"  said  the  entomologist, 
turning  to  his  collecting  tin. 

And  so  it  comes  about  that  a  small  case  con- 
taining a  carefully  set  little  butterfly  has  a  place 
of  honor  in  Wasteneys'  study. 


280     The  Love-Letters  of  the  King 

No  one  but  himself  and  Adeline  knows  what  it 
means. 


Yes !  Adeline.  For  though  Wasteneys  had 
realized  that  our  deepest  life  is  lived  as  units, 
he  had  realized  too  that  great  aids  to  the  full  and 
happy  living  of  it  are  a  woman  who  loves  you, 
and  little  children.  To  this  too,  as  we  have  seen, 
Nature,  who  had  finally  rescued  him  that  spring 
day,  had  long  been  leading  him.  Needless  to 
say,  he  had  returned  home  without  seeing  Meriel, 
and,  a  few  days  later,  he  was  walking  at  evening 
once  more  with  Adeline  in  her  Surrey  garden. 
The  children's  hour  had  once  more  drawn  them 
close  to  each  other,  and  there  was  a  great  calm 
in  both  their  hearts. 

"Adeline,"  said  Wasteneys,  presently,  "if  you 
loved  any  one,  would  you  wish  them  to  be  near 
you,  and  would  you  be  sorry  when  they  were  far 
away?  " 

"Of  course." 

"And  would  you  mind  if  they  talked  some- 
times, and  even  told  you  that  they  loved  you  a 
little  oftener  than  strictly  necessary?" 

"  Of  course  I  would  n't.  What  woman  would  ? 
What  a  strange  question  !  " 

"You  're  quite  sure?  " 

"Certain." 


"  Aurore  de  Provence"  281 

"And  would  you  mind  their  growing  old? 
And  would  you  fear  that  daily  life  together 
would  make  each  other's  little  imperfections 
show  too  clear?  " 

"  Of  course  not ;  surely  that  is  love.  But  why 
do  you  ask  ?  " 

"Well,  because  if  you  really  feel  like  that,  I 
wish  you  would  find  it  in  your  heart  to  love  me." 

"But  .   .   ." 

She  looked  up  with  solemn  inquiry  in  her  face. 

"You  mean  the  woman  the  king  loved? " 

"Yes!" 

"  She  was  not  a  woman.  She  was  a  beautiful 
unearthly  spirit  —  not  meant  for  human  love. 
The  king  has  since  learnt  to  love  a  real  woman." 

"  Are  you  sure  ?  " 

"  Look  at  me.      Do  you  doubt  ?  " 

"  Yes  !  I  think  —  you  —  love  —  me, "  said  Ade- 
line, looking  long  into  his  eyes. 

And  so  it  was  that  Adeline  gave  up  her  book- 
binding. 


THE  END 


NEW    FICTION 

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An  historical  novel  of  great  dramatic  and  artistic  power.  —  Beacon ,  Boston. 

The  first  successful  attempt  to  follow  in  the  path  of  Cooper  and  to  present 

the    picturesque   side    of  the   American    Indians.  —  N.   TT.  Commercial 

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NEW    FICTION 

Currita,  Countess  of  Albornoz 

A  Novel  of  Madrid  Society,  By  LUIS  COLOMA.  Translated 
from  the  Spanish  by  Estelle  Huyck  Attwell.  J2mo.  $J.50 

This  remarkable  novel,  the  work  of  a  Jesuit  priest,  has  had  a 
great  success  in  Spain,  and  perhaps  deserves  an  equally  great 
one  here.  It  is  brilliant  and  powerful,  and  treats  of  the  cor- 
ruption of  Madrid  society  and  its  follies,  with  a  sharp  and 
caustic  pen,  directed  with  keen  insight  into  the  forces  which 
mould  all  social  life. 

Invisible  Links 

By  SELMA  LAGERLOF,  author  of  "Gosta  Berling,"  "The 
Miracles  of  Antichrist,"  etc.  Translated  by  Pauline  Bancroft 
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Of  such  distinguished  merit  as  to  demand  the  greatest  admiration  from  any 
reader  of  fiction.  —  Philadelphia  Inquirer. 

In  this  new  volume  of  short  stories  her  genius  is  at  its  best  and  they 
present  the  very  best  work  she  has  yet  done.  —  Los  Angeles  Times. 

The  Bronze  Buddha 

A  Mystery.  By  CORA  LINN  DANIELS,  author  of  "Sar- 
dia."  J2mo.  Decorated  cloth.  $1.50 

Of  surpassing  interest.  —  Boston  Globe. 

The  author  has  caught  the  art  of  deepening  the  interest  of  readers  with 

every  page.  —  Minneapolis  Journal. 

Behind  the  Veil 

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A  romance  of  the  future  life  as  related  to  the  present.  The  scenery  is 
material,  but  the  thought  is  thoroughly  ethical,  Scriptural,  spiritual,  a  tonic 
for  hours  of  moral  weakness  and  comfort  for  hours  of  sorrow.  —  Outlook. 

In  Vain 

By  HENRYK  SIENKIEWICZ.    Translated  from  the  Polish 
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Considered    as  a  first  book  .   .  it    is  one  of  the  wonders  of  literature. 
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